Earlier this year Alibaba, the world’s largest b2b marketplace, appointed Locker Room to manage a range of campaigns for the brand focused upon growing their awareness amongst key target demographic and generating an increase in new customers in the UK.  We want to share some of our work and further increase the awareness amongst our peers of this truly innovative business.

Alibaba offer an online market place that facilitates business-to-business international and domestic trade between buyers and suppliers. If you want to sell something here in the UK (or anywhere for that matter) there is a high chance that you can source a supplier of your products through Alibaba, in a secure and trusted environment.

Founded in 1999 the group now employs over 25,000 people, with 69 million registered users across 240 countries and regions. The group completed an IPO onto the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in November 2007 and was the largest IPO at the time since Google in 2004. Today’s market cap is some 45.9bn HKD.

The initial focus for Locker Room was through utilising social media channels to generate an interest and buzz for the brand. We set about creating a range of video content that would be used to educate and inform businesses about Alibaba, but also to offer advice on domestic and international trade.

We felt the best people to offer real life experience and expertise are the current customers that are using Alibaba on a daily basis. Working closely with Alibaba and their customers we have created video content that helps to educate entrepreneurs and businesses in the SME sector. Alibaba have created a Knowledge Centre offering advice and information across hot business topics.

Each video complements the knowledge centre with successful business men and women offering advice on topics such as “starting a business”, “selling on Amazon and eBay”, ” the supply chain” and “getting funding for your business”.

Following the success of this campaign across the key target audience, we have begun an integrated media campaign spanning social, display, contextual, outdoor and event marketing.

Working with Alibaba gets ever more interesting and exciting, not only as marketers but also as business owners ourselves.