Kicking off its 10-year International Olympic Committee partnership, the Alibaba Group rolled out its first Olympic brand campaign with emotional storytelling aimed at driving awareness of its support for small businesses.
The strategic and creative concept aims to use sports to reinforce links between the company’s work with small businesses – showcasing just how powerful small can be with the right support.
Spearheading its 10-year Olympic partnership, the long-awaited ‘To The Greatness Of Small’ campaign broke two weeks ahead of the PyeongChang 2018 Opening Ceremony (a year after the company penned its IOC TOP partnership in January 2017).
The activation, developed by agencies BBDO and Proximity China, spans TV and print visuals in China, as well as digital, social, corporate communications and PR in China, Korea, The US, UK and Japan, plus research support, OOH work, logo optimisation, outdoor ads and on the ground activation at the Winter Olympics in South Korea.
Alibaba's Olympic Ads: 'To the Greatness of Small' pic.twitter.com/uco88rgzsy
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) January 29, 2018
The creative is led by a set of three films illustrating how one small action can touch millions of people and inspire the world and spearheaded by a hero commercial called ‘Manifesto’.
The spot is essentially an ode to the power of small: showing that every action, regardless of size, has the ability to make a great difference.
It features an under-sized hockey player flattening a much bigger one and a small female boxer’s punching prowess.
The ad’s voice says: “A small character has unrivaled power. A small corner can impact the whole world. A small country’s story can inspire all humanity. From big to small, everyone is making a difference. Alibaba Group, together with the Olympic Games, gives everyone an equal chance. To the greatness of small.”
The opening wave of work sees this spearhead spot supported by additional sports true story films.
One of these revolves around a Kenyan ice hockey team and aims to show the power of a small number of people who go against the odds to build a sport that doesn’t sit naturally in its environment.
For this spot’s South African shoot, the crew invited the five Kenyan hockey players to join them whilst they filmed in a proper ice hockey rink. After completing the shoot, these players were invited on a tour of South Africa, but the team captain replied “we do not want to go anywhere else but here in the professional rink, if only for one more hour”.
Another spot retells a real story of an Olympic rower, Australian sculler Henry Pearce, who stopped to let some ducks pass and yet still won the race in the Amsterdam Games of 1928.
Alibaba will leverage different media resources across its own platforms during the PyeongChang 2018 opening ceremony to further promote the campaign and will continue to activate throughout the Games.
“Since our founding 19 years ago, Alibaba Group has believed in and embraced the greatness of small in everything we do,” explained Alibaba chief marketing officer Chris Tung.
“Through this campaign we can share the story of what Alibaba has stood for from day one, which is to support the small guy and leverage our technology to help the underdog succeed in the global marketplace. We believe that technology can level the playing field, and that even small companies have the opportunity to be global companies.”
At the campaign launch event, Tung said that the company had considered hundreds of sporting and Olympic-themed stories that all underpinned Alibaba’s beliefs and mission.
“Our approach has a lot of in common with the Olympic Games,” he added.
“Before the Games start, every athlete comes in as an equal. Every athlete has a chance to compete and win on this global stage. We believe our mission aligns perfectly with the Olympic spirit. That’s the message we want everyone to hear, loud and clear, from us during the Games.”
Comment:
Any debut campaign from a new global IOC TOP partner is eagerly awaited.
And this one more than most!
After all, emerging markets are increasingly engaging with and investing in top-level sport: the next three Olympic Games will be staged in Asia, while Russia and Qatar are the next two FIFA World Cup hosts. Some predict a geographic rebalancing of top level sport and global sports sponsorship.
China is leading the way: spearheaded by Alibaba’s new IOC partnership (plus its World Rugby tie-up) and Wanda Group’s new FIFA sponsorship (and its UCI alliance).
But this debut activation doesn’t itself set in motion a revolutionary new creative or strategic approach. Indeed, this is solid old-school emotional sports storytelling which the brand says will be measured by three classic benchmarks to judge success: overall brand awareness, campaign engagement metrics and foot traffic at the Olympic Showcase.
Alibaba already boasts half a billion consumers buying $547bn-plus worth of goods and services with 100,000 brands and 10 million small businesses currently using its platforms – thus making it the world’s largest online and mobile commerce company, but it is not that well-known beyond China.
So it has ambitious growth plans and aims to reach two billion consumers and tens of millions of merchants worldwide by 2036 as part of a decade-long sponsorship of the Olympics.
Chinese e-commerce business looks to not only “digitally transform” the Games, but also expand its international footprint and secure itself as a long-term global player.
One of 13 TOP programme global IOC partners, it was back in January 2017 that Alibaba became the first company to sign up to a long term sponsorship through to 2028 (reported to be worth as much as $1bn).
As well as joining the TOP partnership programme for the next six Games, the Hangzhou-headquartered Alibaba Group also became the IOC’s official Cloud Services and e-commerce platform services partner, (providing cloud-computing infrastructure and services to help transform the Games for the digital era and e-commerce platforms to sell official Olympic-licensed products).
The company also became a partner in the Olympic Channel (the IOC’s digital TV service that aims to promote the Games to younger sports fans and offer year-round content).
As well as joining the TOP partnership programme for the next six Games, the Hangzhou-headquartered Alibaba Group also became the IOC’s official Cloud Services and e-commerce platform services partner, (providing cloud-computing infrastructure and services to help transform the Games for the digital era and e-commerce platforms to sell official Olympic-licensed products).
The company also became a partner in the Olympic Channel (the IOC’s digital TV service that aims to promote the Games to younger sports fans and offer year-round content).
Q&A: Alibaba-IOC Partnership Promises to Be Transformative for Games https://t.co/YCX3y14Rj3 #PyeongChang2018 @iocmedia pic.twitter.com/WmsM9fmOSu
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) January 29, 2018
Links:
Alibaba Group
https://www.youtube.com/user/AlibabaGroupPage
https://www.facebook.com/AlibabaUS/
https://twitter.com/AlibabaGroup
BBDO
Proximity China
https://www.proximityworld.com/
IOC
https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/
https://www.instagram.com/olympicchannel/
https://www.facebook.com/OlympicChannel/
