Do you know what 11.11 means in China? Ten years ago, November 11 was not a special day in China. But many university male students began to celebrate 11.11 as a special day for singles, simply because “1” was associated with the single person. Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, was quickly and accurately aware of the huge value from this campus subculture. In 2009, Allibaba set 11.11 as “Singles Day Online Shopping Festival”, and offered huge discounts for eConsumers on this day ( Zaharov-Reutt, 2014).

From 2009, each Singles Day Online Shopping Festival created excitement among consumers through effective communications, and the sales of Alibaba’s online shopping platforms on each 11.11 always break the records. This year, the sales on 11.11 hit a record $9.3 billion within 40 minutes after the start of its 11.11 shopping festival, which is more than three times of the sales on American Thanksgiving Day (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xYhHHT73Zc). The total sales reached $30.6 billion. Moreover, Alibaba decided to promote its 11.11 festival worldwide by cooperating with more global brands such as Juicy Couture and Costco from this year (Tam, 2014), which means more global sellers and consumers may join the celebration of Singles Day.

How Alibaba turned a campus subculture into the most important shopping festival for consumers? From this year’s marketing communications of Alibaba’s 11.11 festival executed by DDB, emotional connection, effective media mix, and brand repositioning were the important success factors.

First, Alibaba has established emotional connection with the singles by demonstrating the understanding of their various feelings and needs, and encouraged the singles to pursue happiness by taking good care of themselves. At this level, Alibaba tried to turn consumer’s desire for happiness into the shopping desire.

Next, Alibaba promoted its marketing communications across both traditional and social media earlier before 11.11. All prints, ads, and billboard utilized red background and golden “11.11” which symbolize celebration in China. Numerous sellers of Alibaba participated the discussions with consumers about how to maximize the benefits from 11.11 across social media, and suggested consumers to put the desired products into their shopping carts in advance.. Obviously, Alibaba took great efforts to make 11.11 a big day! It is a celebration, a competition, and a funny experience that every one cannot miss it.

When Alibaba make a common day become the biggest shopping festival, many competitors must want to get a piece of the action. How to differentiate Alibaba from the competitors like Amazon is always a key question for the Singles Day campaign every year.   The most successful step of this year’s campaign was that Allibaba re-posited its platforms as the high-end virtual mall for consumers to purchase global brands. This was the reason of why the sales of this year exceeded the previous records and attracted global attention.

References:

Tam, D. (2014). How Alibaba turned 1111 into $$$$. Retrieved from http://www.cnet.com/news/how-alibaba-turned-1111-into/

Zaharov-Reutt, A. (2014). China’s 2014 “11.11” and Alibaba to set online shopping record. http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/market/66026-china%E2%80%99s-2014-%E2%80%991111%E2%80%99-and-alibaba-to-set-online-shopping-record

Video. (2014). China’s Singles Day: Alibaba profits off holiday it created. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_3Dz3JZ-8k