How brands promoted themselves in the lead up to Alibaba's Singles Day

This year’s Singles Day broke all records once again (transactions hit $14 billion – up 60 percent on last year), as retailers reaped the rewards of offering deep discounts and one-off deals in a 24-hour frenzy of online shopping.

However, even when taking part in an event entirely focused on reduced prices and special offers, most retailers have realized that it’s not enough to simply undercut the competition. If everyone is offering low, low prices, when competing with more than 30,000 other brands, what’s the best way to stand out from the crowd?

Over the years, smart retailers have done their research; taking Singles Day excitement to their customers where they live by using their preferred media for targeted advertising and promotions. For many in China, that channel is on mobile, but for older demographics and consumers in rural areas of China, traditional television also plays a role.

Here is an overview of some of the creative ways brands promoted themselves in anticipation of Singles Day.

ASOS

For many consumers in China – 600 million to be exact – Tencent’s mobile communication app, WeChat, is the main point of engagement with brands.

ASOS, for example, launched a series of e-commerce applications for phones and tablets in China. The fashion retailer carefully integrated WeChat into its mobile app strategy by developing sharable WeChat emojis around the theme of love and singledom.

In this example, the characters read: “She is so beautiful. She is shining.”

Xiaomi

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi ran a sophisticated global social media strategy – using channels like Facebook and Twitter that are not available in China. For example, in Malaysia, the brand ran a Facebook campaign which included a countdown to the day itself, as well as Mi cash coupons with limited availability and strict deadlines. This was intentionally designed to build enthusiasm for the event and encourage followers to feel like they are part of an exclusive club, with advance access to the deals available.

Xiaomi is aggressively expanding its international footprint, so it is not surprising that it is engaging non-Chinese social media as part of that strategy.

Here’s a tweet for example:

#MiSinglesDay2015 – New products for 11 Nov! #MiBandPulse, Mi In-Ear Headphones Pro & 20000mAh #MiPowerBank pic.twitter.com/fhVF1CcJkE

— Mi (@xiaomi) November 10, 2015

The brand was also able to embrace the addtional global exposure this year’s Singles Day received.

Pechoin

Skincare product Pechoin first gained popularity in China and Southeast Asia in the 1930s. However, in recent years it has adopted a more aggressive marketing strategy; branding itself as the national pride of the country. Pechoin has also been able to leverage its use by China’s popular first lady, Peng Liyuan.

While this has helped propel its profile in China, Singles Day requires a more strategic approach for any brand, in order to stand out in the very crowded 24-hour marketplace.

Tmall has a very complex mechanism to distribute traffic among brands. One very important variable is the current level of sales – that is to say, the more you sell, the more traffic you will get. Pechoin offered free orders for the first 1000 successful purchases of each of its four hero products. As a result, the fast sales mechanism enabled them to get a high-ranking position early in the event, setting the pace for the rest of the day. Pechoin was the only brand on Singles Day to exceed sales of RMB 100 million (U.S. $16 million) in this category, according to its website.

Zalora

Online fashion brand Zalora used its WeChat account to promote Singles Day by rewarding its fans; offering vouchers to the first 1,000 people to send the message: I love ZALORA. The vouchers could only be used on November 11, ensuring rapid sales turnaround and keeping customer attention focused on Zalora.

The Cambridge Satchel Company

The Cambridge Satchel Company leveraged WeChat and Weibo stickers to drive engagement with a campaign called Show Your Love.

In this initiative, The Cambridge Satchel Company gave fans five ways to help single people express their love and start a relationship. However, these were tongue-in-cheek suggestions, presented in the form of WeChat illustrations by well-known Chinese key opinion leader (KOL) and artist, Zang Xiaobai.

Fans could then add the images to their sticker collections – an integral element for a number of Asian communications apps – for use on WeChat or as image sets on Weibo.

Here are a couple of examples:

The phonetics sound like, “I like you,” but the character meaning is: “Black pineapple.”

In this cartoon, the characters read: “A handbag cures 100 illnesses.”

Within these stickers, the brand and the illustrator integrated the five key products for sale on The Cambridge Satchel Company’s Tmall Singles Day global site promotion.

Channel crossover

Given Alibaba’s enthusiasm for turning Singles Day into an international event, it’s not surprising that promotional buzz about an exclusively online festival made it into the physical world. This year is the first time the e-commerce giant hosted a Global Shopping Festival event, at its Hangzhou headquarters, to launch the event. It was attended by representatives from 39 countries and more than 40 international brands.

On the eve of the big day, Alibaba put on another first – an extravagant, televised countdown gala featuring a variety of entertainers, streamed live throughout the world.

*Daniel Craig with Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group during the Singles Day gala television event on November 11 in Beijing. (Alizila)

Commercials appeared throughout the television program, encouraging viewers in the stadium and watching TV to get involved by using the “Shake-shake” function of the popular Taobao mobile app, if they guessed the winners of the star teams playing games on stage. For example, they could go on to buy a range of products worth about 1 RMB; from a carton of imported milk, to a vacuum cleaning robot. All of this was designed to cement the idea of Singles Day as a bona fide holiday that just happens to be devoted to shopping, but is really more about the celebration and spectacle, as opposed to being another version of the United States’ Black Friday.

Conclusion

From a purely transactional perspective, it can be tempting to view Singles Day as an opportunity to cut prices across all products to get the biggest bang for your buck. However, Alibaba appears to be evolving as both a business and promotional concept, encouraging a focus on quality rather than quantity.

To do this, it has set up a team whose only purpose is to identify and hand-pick star products across all brands that are then given an extra push on the day. Key criteria include reasonable cost, ease of shipping, and genuine value to the customer. Brands hoping to expand upon Singles Day in the future would do well to take note of these factors.

Alibaba’s November 11 Singles Day is a major aspect of many brands’ digital marketing strategy for China. But doing well at this event isn’t just about turning up on the day with a few discounts or promotions; brands that do well begin their preparation long in advance and draw awareness to offers and promotions as early as October. To do this, they consider mobile marketing strategies, engagement on WeChat, leveraging the marketing efforts of Tmall and other platforms for additional publicity, and extending free offers that help increase Tmall rankings on the day.

With careful preparation and an eye on where customers spend time online, retailers can ensure that consumers can see the value and quality of products themselves to reap the benefits of this, now global online shopping extravaganza.