The Campaign

According to the survey, people in metropolis cities of China visit museums about 0.8 times per year, while people in other big cities of developed countries visit museums about 2.6 times per year. People are too busy with accumulating material wealth and have less time or chances to enjoy arts and cultures. They are always on the go. Tmall intended to make some changes. Tmall would like to establish a unique brand image rather than just provide lower price and better service. It aimed to get into consumers’ daily life in an artistic way. Through cooperating with 36 creators, Tmall took their 36 pieces of artwork to the Xujiahui metro station in Shanghai and successfully turned it into a pop-up exhibition hall. Tmall intended to catch passengers’ eyes and make them slow their pace and enjoy the works.

Creative Execution

Location: interchange passageway of L1/9 Xujiahui Station in Shanghai Metro Media: brand domination(including 12-sheet light-boxes, pillar wraps, wall stickers) Tmall turned the brand area into a red themed art exhibition by transforming 8 pillar wraps and a 7-meter-length wall with high density fiberboard and red emulsion paint, and decorating 36 artworks on transformed pillar wraps and the wall. The 7-meter-length wall was decorated by 4 artworks; each pillar wrap was decorated by 4 artworks (one artwork on each side) Warm colored reflector lamps were displayed inside showcase of each artwork to gain the lighting effect which is the same as art gallery.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

This innovate campaign attracted lot of passengers’ attention and stop to enjoy it. It also highly regarded by passengers engaged in art industry. A research conducted by a third-party research firm(Intage China Inc.) showed that the advertising recall reached 94% after 4 weeks releasing. During 4 weeks releasing period, the media reach rate is 89%, and the frequency is 18,582,844. On November 11, 2015, sales volume of Tmall reached 91.217 billion.

In order to take a share of the huge mar¬ket, several big e-commerce companies provided big discount to attract consumers. Tmall realized that the competitive edge not only needs low price, but also requires a good brand image and service. Meanwhile, Tmall detected that as the pace of life continues to increase in China, especially in cosmopolitan cities, people seem forever on the go, and have less opportunity to enjoy the time in art exhibition. Tmall would like to bring an art exhibition in Shanghai Metro, where there are huge amount of target audience of Tmall, with the feature of preferring online shopping, high quality, willing to try new things, and the like. Tmall took advantage of the brand domination in Xujiahui Station, and transformed it into an art exhibition with 36 artworks in the subject of “Tmall Cat”, which were created by 22 artists and 14 brands, such as L’oreal, LAMY, Muji, Kindle, etc., to enable passengers to slow their pace and enjoy the art, and to improve its brand awareness. The red themed art exhibition successfully stole the limelight, and created a great stir in the social media.