The Big Double Eleven

Ma Yun, Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of  of Alibaba Group has been known as the richest man in China as of November 2014. The time of the news is interesting, and I believe he is likely to rank the first again in November of this year.

The biggest company under the group is call T.Mall. Similar to Amazon, it's a website for online shopping.

Today, I wanna to discuss the phenomena about a newly Holiday in China, and the back push of it.

The holiday ,we called "Double Eleven" or"Single Day" has a very interesting original. In my memory,  it's about 2009' winter, when the date November 11st coming, people found the date can be written as "11.11", and every ''1'' has been called as a person who don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend. We have Valentine’s Day, but there's no holiday for single person. So people spontaneously named this date to be the "Single Day" for fun. Although it's not a official holiday, the influence of it is still huge.

After the "foundation" of it, there's a movie that pushed the date to a even more popular place. On November 11st 2011( also can be written as "11.11.11" has been call "God single day",means God would also be single on that day.), the movie call"Love is not blind" has been shown. The movie described how a girl being dumped and getting recover in 33 days. Under the effect of "God Single Day", the movie achieved a huge success in box office, and also the holiday has been more impressive in public's mind.

I wondered it must be the online sales store that created the saying "when a girl being hurt in love ,the most effective to recover is shopping". Anyway, out of no reason, almost all the online stores aimed on this day, and giving out the strongest discount. It has became a Black Friday in China.

Among all the store, T.Mall is undoubtedly the No.1 in the industry. Here is a brief conclusion of the performance on that day in T.Mall. Actually I was shocked by those numbers every time. Here is the bar chart described sales value on November 11th from 2009, the unit of it is 100million yuan.(The number of this year is a estimate one).

Last year, the sale value has almost be 60 billion yuan, and this year, the record has been broken in 11 hours and 50 minutes.

Several sales record has been updated, such as "reaching 10million yuan in 18 seconds", "12min'29" for 10billion yuan" and ended up with "92.1 billion yuan" for the day.

The crazy numbers showed the purchase power of Chinese, and the magic of marketing. Mayun even held a Gala for it this year, and attempt to invite American president Barack Obama(being rejected though). And "James Bond" Daniel Craig has shown on that stage.

Effects of viral videos

Most of the viral videos are aiming at building up the some certain features for the behind brands. These kinds of features can be funny, meaningful, touching, or motivational. they all positive. However, if a brand being connected with some super ugly or negative feelings through a viral video,  should the outcome be negative to the brand? I think the answer is doubtful.

UNIQLO

Uniqlo, a Japanese Casual wear designer, manufacturer, and retailer. It has recently launched a new retail store in Chicago, but I am gonna tell a story around the one in Sanlitun,Beijing.

UNIQIO IN SANLITUN

In a midnight on July 14th of this summer,  a video has been spread as virus on all the social media. The key words of the video:"Sanlitun", "UNIQIO","Fitting Room" have occupied the top places of all the search engines. The content of the video is a couple are having sex in the UNIQIO fitting room. The girl has filmed all the process by Front-facing camera of her phone. 

People shocked about the video, and more people are interested in the details of it. This mini video(1'30" in total) has been viewed million times within several hours(Unfortunately, the relevant video and the view amount has been deleted by government, I cannot fins specific numbers). Most people noticed that in the end of the video there's a voice speaking:" Welcome to Sanlitun' UNIQLO. Wish you have a nice shopping experience here."

The public transferred the focus from the video itself to UNIQLO, and no matter what kind of impacts it create for UNIQLO. The publicity and sales are both rising up during that time.

Although UNIQLO has announced the video has nothing to do with the brand, there're some voices believe it's a marketing trick.

Through this video and the follow-up effects from public, I started to believe that in a relatively mature or complex market, Rising the publicity is the most effective and vital thing to make profits.
Similar to some entertainers, many little stars tried so hard to let people recognize them no matter how. Sometimes a sandal can be a trigger for people to get know a brand, but it's also a risky one.