Kaspi.kz turns Jackie Chan into ‘Jackie-zhan’ in new GForce Grey campaign

Jackie Chan has officially become Jackie-zhan in Kazakhstan – at least for Kaspi.kz’s latest advertising campaign, created by GForce Grey.

 

The action movie legend has been living in Kazakhstan for several months while filming his new movie, Armour of God 4. And with Jackie already spending so much time in the country, Kaspi.kz decided to take the idea one step further: what if Jackie Chan were actually Kazakhstani?

Kaspi.kz is Kazakhstan’s leading fintech company, with a super app used by 15 million people in a country of 20 million. So, if Jackie Chan really lived in Kazakhstan, chances are he wouldn’t be Jackie Chan anymore. He’d be Jackie-zhan (a real Kazakh name) maybe even working as a taxi driver or any other profession.

But there’s one thing we can say with absolute certainty: just like every other Kazakhstani, he’d be a Kaspi.kz customer, using its services every day.

The campaign kicked off with a teaser, setting the stage for what was to come:

The teaser was followed by the campaign’s first film, in which Jackie-zhan, now transformed into an ordinary Kazakh taxi driver, gets a Kaspi.kz bank card issued in just 60 seconds at a Kaspi.kz card machine, and then picks up Kaspi.kz CEO Mikhail Lomtadze, who makes a cameo appearance in the film.

A major series of films is planned as part of the huge campaign “Jackie-zhan. Made in Kazakhstan,” with Jackie-zhan telling new stories around different Kaspi.kz services. At the heart of the campaign is a simple idea: to celebrate Kaspi.kz as a company made in Kazakhstan and inspire a sense of pride among Kazakhstanis in a homegrown brand that has grown into a service used by millions across the country.

The films were shot in Almaty over four production days, with a 230-person international crew led by Spanish director Lonan Garcia, who also makes a cameo appearance in the campaign.

Yevgeny Kostylev, Executive Creative Director at GForce Grey, said: “We shot a whole series of films, each with its own story. I can’t reveal any details or spoil what’s coming, it’s better to wait until the films are released. We’re still deep in post-production, and there’s a huge amount of work ahead.

“This is probably the biggest project we’ve worked on in recent years, both for us and for Kazakhstan. In terms of complexity and sheer scale, it’s significantly bigger than our previous star-studded project for Kaspi, the campaign we created with Antonio Banderas. That production took just two shooting days and one location. This time, we had four shooting days and a whole range of different locations.

“With an incredibly tight schedule, we had to shoot 30 setups with Jackie Chan in a single day. Nobody believed it was possible. The agency and production studio were really nervous about how Jackie would react when we presented him with the storyboard.

“But when Jackie looked at it, his only response was: ‘Easy!’

“And he was right – we pulled it off.

“Jackie Chan is an absolutely incredible professional, actor and human being.”

The second film, featuring another new Jackie-zhan story, will hit the screens very soon.

Credits
Client: Kaspi.kz
Marketing Department Director: Dmitry Pak
Head of Brand Promotion: Zarina Solodkaya
Brand Manager: Ksenia Makeeva, Anastasiya Mazylo
Head of Mass Communication Channels: Gulnara Galieva

Agency: GForce Grey, Kazakhstan
CEO of the creative business DASM group: Yuliya Tushina
Managing Director: Anna Kostyleva
Executive Creative Director: Yevgeniy Kostylev
Creative Group Head: Victor Yershov
Creative Group Head: Rafael Niyazov
Art Director: Maxim Shilov
Designer: Tatyana Popova
Client Service Director: Anastasia Ivanova
Senior Account Manager: Saida Tsoy

Production Studio: Toy Cinema (IE Paperbox)
Director: Lonan Garcia
Director’s producer: Jane Kardi
DOP: Genia Gubrenko
1AD: Mariya Gaevskaya
Executive Producer: Dmytro Sukhanov
Line Producers: Viktoriya Kotyay, Stanislav Kotyay