For this 618 Shopping Festival, Alibaba’s Tmall platform has taken over one of Shanghai’s landmark buildings, the Gate M West Bund Dream Center, and turned it into a “film studio”. The Tmall Super Launch (天猫超级发布) event transformed the large art space of the former cement factory into “sound stages” and built “sets” for each of the participating brands.
The pop-up space provides multiple immersive spaces, connected with dolly tracks and complete with functional lighting for photo ops. With props provided, you can become a character in each of the worlds created by the brands. From fast-food chain McDonald’s and washing-up liquid brand Liby (立白) to tech giant Huawei and baijiu brand Fenjiu (汾酒). A special “control studio” was also set up for Mao Tiantian (猫天天), Tmall’s T-shaped cat mascot, as the “director” of the production.
In fact, the pop-up is more interactive than that. Visitors actually become participants in the productions, receiving “scripts” for the brands’ commercials, closely resembling role-play events like Secret Cinema. You will receive “tasks” to complete during your experience and a “Meow-scar” trophy after “wrapping” with “filming”.
The Tmall film studio pop-up welcomed over 230,000 visitors and over 50,000 who immersed themselves in the interactive elements during its first two days. With celebrities such as Chinese actor Chen Jingke and singer-songwriter Liu Lian, frontwoman of the band Mr. Miss, also taking part in the “productions”, the event livestream gained over 5 million views, and over 180,000 of them linked back to Taobao for shopping. This pop-up not only brought 618, the e-commerce festival, offline, but is also an innovative experience in and of itself. By having visitors “star” in a branded commercial, it created an active and in-depth connection between the consumer and the brand, creating a new kind of loyalty.