Best Small Business Integrated Ad Campaign

Traction was brought on with the challenge of launching Alibaba.com to the U.S. small business market. Alibaba.com is a global online platform that allows anyone to find the perfect partner for their business—suppliers, manufacturers or customers—anywhere in the world. The campaign told small businesses that Alibaba.com was the place to “Find it. Make it. Sell it.” Regardless of what “it” might be. To promote this radically new concept to audiences, we crafted an integrated brand narrative across channels aligned to each of the core messages, “Find it. Make it. Sell it.” For instance, the “Find it” story line featured “Mamie” who is able to abandon the grind of corporate boardrooms when she finds inventory on Alibaba.com to start her own oven mitt business and take on the big guys. Integration was seamless across media—and the marketing funnel. The brand narrative began with TV spots, online pre-roll ads, print ads, Flash banners and a rich media ad unit with custom video introducing the characters and tempting viewers to “see how they did it.” Ads drove to success.alibaba.com where additional “mockumentary” videos created specifically for the Web showed how the characters used Alibaba.com to build their successful small businesses. And, adjacent to those videos were direct response offers to propel audiences as far down the funnel as we could. In the month after campaign launch, U.S. traffic to Alibaba.com soared from five to seven million visitors. Over a four-month period, the campaign lifted awareness from 14% to 33%.

Contributors:

Executive Creative Director:	Theo Fanning
Associate Creative Director:	Renee Crawshaw
Associate Creative Director:	Jim Reed
Copywriter:	Guy Reingold
Art Director:	Kellie Okai
Lead Developer:	Dan Trudell
Technical Director:	Paul Giese
Senior Account Director:	Jabeen Yusuf

TRACTION

Location: USA