Singapore – ShopBack is returning with ShopFest 2022, the shopping festival it dubs its ‘largest’, having it slated for a 4-month run. September marks the countdown to the year-end holiday season and ShopBack’s festival comprises the biggest sales events – 9.9, 10.10, 11.11, Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) and 12.12.

ShopFest 2022 is a global initiative across all of ShopBack’s 10 markets and is actually now in its 5th year running. The massive shopping event seeks to achieve the same – continue driving sales for businesses across the island in the year-end shopping season.

As ShopFest launches this year, it will be the first time users will be able to run their shopping experience in the presence of two new ShopBack features launched earlier this year – ShopBack Pay and ShopBack PayLater. In line with ShopBack’s new brand tagline – ‘For The Wins’ – this year’s ShopFest is themed around the concept of ‘Like a VVIP’, which promises ‘to go above and beyond’ to deliver the best deals to ShopBack’s users.

“Our goal is for shoppers to feel a sense of personal victory every time they shop with us. With ShopFest 2022, we are going above and beyond to serve our fellow shoppers – our VIPs – with the best experiences and deals. At the same time, we want to encourage users to explore and experience the benefits of our recently launched ShopBack Pay and PayLater features, for a complete and integrated shopping journey,” says Fern Nannaphat, country manager of ShopBack Singapore.

According to ShopBack, last year’s ShopFest saw a 7x increase in merchants’ e-commerce sales on mega shopping days. This year, ShopBack is expecting to surpass its previous year’s performance with an average of 11x increase in sales generated for merchant partners during each of the 5 mega sale days.

Nannaphat also shares, “Looking back at ShopFest last year, the top performing shopping categories other than general marketplaces were in beauty, fashion (especially athleisure & cross border merchants) and health supplements such as vitamins and protein. However, we believe this year’s rendition will be vastly different. With the prevalence of ‘revenge travel’, the trend is likely to change with travel expenditure expected to top the charts, followed by the fashion category through athleisure brands like lululemon, Nike and Uniqlo as some of the fastest growing e-commerce brands since the start of the year.”

To kick-start the festival, this coming 9.9 mega sale day, ShopBack users may shop to get 10 extra chances to win S$100,000 worth of Tesla shares. The top spending VVIPs will also win up to S$50,000 worth of exclusive experiences at each mega sales day. This includes experiences such as a pair of F1 Singapore Grand Prix Padang grandstand Tickets worth S$1,200, a luxury yacht experience for eight worth S$1,200, and a pair of 2-Day VVIP pass to ZoukOut worth S$1,100. 

In addition, top five VVIPs will be selected to participate in ShopBack’s first-ever game show, The VVIP Circle, where they will stand a chance to win up to S$2,000 in cash. The show will be aired on the ShopBack app one day before each mega event on – 9 October, 10 November, 24 November, and 11 December, from 8 pm to 9 pm. 

Singapore – In August this year, top e-commerce platform Shopee unveiled its newest endorser, probably its biggest ambassador to date – global superstar Jackie Chan. 

Following the announcement, Chan’s first visibility was for the platform’s 9.9 sale, and now the renowned action celebrity is back to grace Shopee’s campaign for 11.11. 

Both advertisements with Chan were nothing short of the e-commerce’s creatives DNA – a cheerful and upbeat mood, animated movements, and of course, Shopee’s staple soundtrack. 

Screencap from Shopee’s latest 11.11 ad

However, on the back of the recent release for 11.11, some marketing and creative professionals on social media gave their verdict on the ad – which leaned towards disappointment and frustration over its creative execution. 

On Monday, October 25, Richard Bleasdale, a specialist advisor at media investment analysis firm, Ebiquity, shared an article about the ad on a LinkedIn post with the comment, “Is it just me? Or is this without doubt the worst ad ever made? I challenge anyone to nominate better (worse).”

The post attracted other creative experts and advertising leaders to share opinions of their own, which had a resounding rejection of the ad’s conceptualization and overall direction. 

“The bar is very low…”, one ad leader wrote, while one marketing leader pointed out how the ad made him “lost for words.” 

Another agreed to Bleasdale, commenting, “I know what [you] mean. Very disappointing. Was hoping for more [Jackie] action.” 

MARKETECH APAC‘s Inner State reached out to some of the marketing executives that jumped on the post for their official insights on the ad.

A common sentiment among the marketing executives was how the brand failed to leverage Chan’s superstar imprint of action coupled with comedy. 

Shopee’s 11.11 platform-wide sale is running from October 25 to November 11, and the campaign was launched on October 18 on the platform’s YouTube channels across its covered markets.

The ad showed Jackie Chan on the street, being slowly approached by dangerously looking men. With an impending fight scene, Jackie is seen mustering his strength to prepare to defend.

Throughout the 30-second ad, Jackie is able to fight off the men with Shopee’s ‘Big Sale’. Using only his phone, Jackie magically defeats the men by powering through Shopee’s ‘big discounts’, where for every press of a button, discount bubbles pop up, such as “$60 CASHBACK ALL DAY” and “$6 OFF EVERY $50” off the phone and beat the men down. 

Anand Vathiyar, managing director of Cheil Singapore, describes the ad as an ‘orange mess’, a reference to the platform’s orange branding 

“Jackie Chan’s brand equity is action-comedy…Shopee could have done something [on what] we’ve come to love Jackie for instead of the orange mess they’ve rolled out,” said Vathiyar.

Echoing this, Rob Sherlock, advisory board chairman at martech solutions DAIVID, said, “I do think they could have taken Jackie Chan’s trademark antics and dialed them up into something even crazier, more ‘action’ exaggerated – and still have Shoppee fully integrated into the story.” 

He adds that instead of handing Jackie a mere phone in an attempt to inspire action to the ad, Shopee should have had “some whacky martial-arts impossibility performed by Jackie.” 

“And make the Batman & Robin pow-wow cartoon bubbles more integrated into everything we love about the man,” continued Sherlock. 

Meanwhile, Bleasdale, the one who published the LinkedIn post, shared to MARKETECH APAC that he thinks the ad has been “devoid of any idea.” 

When asked what Shopee could have done better, Bleasdale said, “Start with a real brief – with a clear objective and a compelling consumer insight. Anything that responded to that would be better and more effective than this.”

On one hand, executives were also quick to poke on the past Shopee ad with professional footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, saying that the e-commerce brand had been underperforming with its campaigns even before when it signed the Portuguese sports personality in 2019. 

Shopee’s 9.9 ad in 2019 with Cristiano Ronaldo

The two-year-old ad puts Ronaldo on a football field where shortly after scoring a goal, audiences in the stadium start changing into an orange-wearing army with the trademark Shopee pop-ups coming out of each one. At the middle to the end of the ad, Ronaldo performs the Shopee dance together with his team. 

According to a survey done by consumer research Milieu, 24% of audiences in Singapore ‘dislike’ the 9.9 ad with Ronaldo in 2019, with 56% ‘liking’ it. Of those that disliked the ad, stated reasons were they found it “silly” (60%), made them cringe (60%), and was “annoying” (47%), and lacked product information (37%).

For Sherlock, Ronaldo was the worst use he’s ever seen of a mega-celebrity and thinks if Shopee had done a low-quality ad the first time, it would be difficult to redeem itself.

“It probably worked, drove sales, and tattooed the brand in the consumers’ brains. But, like any sequel, it’s hard to improve on the original – or in this case, be intentionally ‘so bad it’s good’,” said Sherlock.

MARKETECH APAC has already reached out to Shopee for a comment. 

Shopee’s presence expands Southeast Asia and Taiwan. For the latest 11.11 ad, the Thailand market paid the ad a staggering 30 million views on YouTube as of writing. 

The e-commerce platform continues to be the top platform in Southeast Asia with the most visits by consumers in 2020, trailed by Lazada. 

Inner State is MARKETECH APAC’s dedicated platform for industry deep dive.

Singapore – Sales used to be a one-off thing, or at least a seasonal event that sees it happening after a particular interval, but now, sales, in the mid of the rise of e-commerce, has now become so much more than just brands offering discounts, but has turned to be a ‘celebration’ of some sort – a celebration of consumers’ buying power and merchants’ easier access to revenue. With this, mega sales are now being held on a regular basis, specifically every identical date of the month – such as ‘7.7’ for July, or ‘8.8’ for August.

The trend on mega sales events quickly transcended online commerce, and is now being joined by offline brands as well. This then makes brands think, how is the consumer behaving amid all this hoo-ha? Short-video platform TikTok conducted a 2021 survey among over 1,800 Southeast Asian users in March 2021, where 82 percent admitted to purchasing a new brand instead of a regular brand during mega sales. 

Moreover, the same survey demonstrated that over half, 55 percent, made unexpected purchases during the said sales events, even when they had prepared a shopping list. This comes as an interesting insight as brands are in constant search of ways to attract new buyers. Adding to this, TikTok’s data also found that during this time, consumers are more open to exploring, with them shopping more across all categories. 

Consumers’ likelihood to demonstrate an adventurous disposition during these mega sales events can be chalked up to the feelings of elation that shoppers have when these special sales arrive. According to a Nielsen Global Authenticity study, likewise commissioned by the short-video platform, 67 percent of users felt ‘happy’ or ‘excited’ towards the mega sales shopping season. 

On that feel-good factor, it seems that shoppers are not only looking to the shopping event itself to ignite these positive feelings but are also expecting it at every step of the experience – becoming more inclined to engage in ‘shoppertainment’ or the fusion of entertainment and shopping. Brands themselves have raised the bar, leveraging today’s digital platforms in order to allure shoppers such as through live streams, short videos, and even augmented reality. 

The same Nielsen study shows that 83 percent of users prefer to see video ads from brands over gifs or text posts. 

Ng Chew Wee, the head of business marketing for TikTok in Southeast Asia, said that people have ceased simply searching for products, but are also searching for ‘people’. 

“This year, we are seeing a rise of Shoppertainment – a convergence of content and commerce – where shoppers expect not just to be sold to, but to be entertained as well. Instead of people searching for products, products are now searching for people. We hope these insights can help businesses own their Mega Sales moment and engage with TikTok’s community of happy users. Happy users, happy buyers!” said Ng Chew Wee.