Case Study: DDB’s T-mall campaign transforms Singles’ Day into a world-record sales day
DDB Guoan Beijing, part of DDB China Group, launched T-Mall’s Double Eleven’s Crazy Shopping Festival during Singles’ Day on Nov. 11, “11.11” 2012.
The challenge was to beat the previous year’s sales records and ensure the appeal of the campaign touched the mass consumers beyond Tier 1 and 2 cities. The campaign proved it was possible to change the behaviour of Chinese consumers to embrace Singles’ Day as an enjoyable shopping festival, rather than just as another fun-themed holiday. More importantly, it allowed T-Mall to own the day as a ‘Tianmao Day’ pilgrimage-shopping day of the year that drives the whole nation to shop online.
Singles’ Day taps into immense future market potential. Research estimates that the number of online shoppers in China rose to 187 million in 2011, representing an annual increase of 39 million shoppers. This accounts for roughly 36.5 per cent of total internet users in the country for 2011.
A new brand campaign for T-Mall ‘World-famous shopping paradise at your finger tips’ was launched in September. This helped cement T-Mall’s brand positioning as the only online shopping landmark that offers the largest number of flagship brands that are leaders in terms of choice, style and quality. The stylishly shot TVC was set against the backdrop of two iconic shopping paradises, Hong Kong and New York. The spot is based on the insight that shopping embodies every consumer’s desire to own and collect beautiful things. Using T-Mall, this experience has never been smarter and more effortless at their own pace, as part of their own routine and most importantly in the comfort of their own home. Imagine shopping at New York’s 5th Avenue brands while lying in your own bathtub or shopping while on a comfy couch at home.
For this year’s Singles’ Day, DDB took strong branding elements from the TVC and created a campaign online and offline that ran with the tagline ‘Double Eleven’s Crazy Shopping Festival.’
The online campaign was firstly channelled through a TVC on CCTV as well as the Hunan Satellite TV, both one of the most viewed channels in Mainland China. Online videos also ran on Youku, Tencent and Sina.
Banners and advertising material ran in out-of-home light boxes in metros and bus shelters and metro stations carried eye-catching wall sized banners.
Unlike last years target consumers, whom were mostly from the first tier cities, T-mall penetrated the nation’s entire market. Less tactical creative was executed to shift Chinese mindsets from the practicality of ‘just buying stuff’ to ‘enjoying the shopping experience’. The campaign was also carefully planned to ensure T-mall maintains its premium brand positioning and reputation of authenticity with its virtual high-end shopping mall experiences, as opposed to a sales focused e-commerce platform.
Taobao and T-mall successfully turned the Double Eleven’s Singles’ Day into T-mall day – dubbed as China’ s biggest online shopping event by fellow Weibo users.
The festival generated massive sales for the e-retail platform, far surpassing last year’s Singles’ Day. Over 100 million visitors to the two sites drove T-Mall sales to 13.2 billion yuan (US$2.1billion). Sales revenue figures on this day alone were equivalent to the monthly or yearly revenue figures of other similar platforms in China.
The 2012 Singles’ Day T-Mall and Taobao final earnings, 19.1 billion yuan (US$3billion), broke the previous one-day, e-commerce sales record of US$1.25 billion, according to research firm comScore. This now sets a world record outstripping similar shopping days such as Cyber Monday, Black Friday or Boxing Day in the US.
Credits – ‘Double Eleven’s Crazy Shopping Festival’ Campaign: Agency: DDB Guoan Beijing. Account team – Vice President: Randy Xiao. Account Director: Lisa Li. Senior Account Manager: Sett Sun. Account Executive: Wei Wang. Creative team – Executive Creative Director: Stephen Mui. Creative Director. Norman Chen. Senior Art Director: QiuShuang. Copywriter: Amelie Liu.
Credits – ‘World-famous shopping paradise at your finger tips’ TVC: Agency: DDB Shanghai. Creatives: Michael Dee, Billy Deng, Eva Han, Allan Wang, Xiao Yu, Mesu Lu. Producers: George Ooi, Rico Zhang. Traffic: Sandy Wang. Accounts: Angie Wong, Fygi Li, Katherine Zhang. TV Director: David Pung. TV Production House: Off-Lo-Hi Hong Kong. Print Photographer: Jin Miao. Print Production House: Ele Photo Shanghai.