Taobao’s “Seckill”

Taobao’s “SecKill”

Company Taobao is Asia's largest online retailers. Its business includes online auction and online shopping, similar to that of eBay. Founded by Alibaba Group in May 2003, now Taobao has 98,000,000 registered members, and account for 80% of the market share of online shopping in China (Wikipedia.com). In 2009, it reached a gross turnover of 200 billion Yuan ($ 29.3 billion) (sina.com). Seckill Seckill is a new word mostly used in online game which means that gap of power between t two parties are so huge that one can kill the other in a second. In online business, it represents a way of bidding for shopping binging. The merchant on online marketplace pronounce products at the price that couldn't be lower, which stimulates all the buyers to purchase at the same time (Shakee L.). Because of the cheap price, dozens and hundreds are sold out at instant. May be it's just in second. The Whole Campaign Last September, Taobao offer “seckill” campaign with IWOM, one of the earliest mouth marketing companies. This campaign gained great success, and won “National Outstanding Marketing Case” (Tianya.cn). 

Advance Publicity

Before the activity started (September 1st to September 25th), Taobao and IWOM adopt community marketing, WIKI marketing, as well as video marketing (Tianya.cn). Among these, the video marketing successfully draws the attention from public. Two of its elaborate hilarious advertising videos came into the front page recommendation of many popular website like sina.com, youku.com, and tianya.com, and soon reach an average page view of 1 million and a

transship of 500 thousands. This activity did a great job for the advance publicity. Before the “seckill” start, there are already thousands of news, pictures and videos about this activity. The reports from the media are also numerous.

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Creative advising

In September 15th, after the national news, Taobao’s “seckill” advertisement firstly appeared on prime time on the...