Category: Entertainment

By LazBeat Staff
Dec. 16, 2021

On the evening of November 10, LazLive lit up with star-studded performances in the countdown to 11.11, the biggest one-day shopping festival in Southeast Asia. The spectacle, an example of Lazada’s famed Super Shows, garnered more than 7 million views through the eCommerce platform’s in-app livestreaming channel and was also broadcast through social media and TV networks across the region.

Originally launched region-wide to celebrate Lazada’s birthday in 2019, Super Shows have become integral parts of the eCommerce company’s large-scale shopping festivals. They are the epitome of Lazada’s “Shoppertainment” strategy, bringing together A-list celebrities, amazing products, incredible deals, giveaways and tech-powered engagement tools to drive up excitement – and sales – for brands and businesses.

“Super Shows are there to create additional noise and increase awareness about Lazada’s mega campaigns,” explained Neil Trinidad, the chief marketing officer of Lazada Philippines. “It’s the hype and anticipation the day before leading up to midnight of the actual event day. You want to drive those watching the Super Show to the Lazada app, have them add the products we feature into their carts and have them place their orders.”

This strategy has proven extremely successful. This year’s 11.11 Super Show generated three times the gross merchandise value from its live broadcast compared with last year. A significant amount of this GMV came from sales generated from voucher redemption during the show.

A key reason for this success is the amount of thought and effort that goes into every Super Show. it can take close to three months for a show to go from conceptualisation to actual broadcast. To ensure cohesiveness across all six markets where Lazada operates, the regional branding team usually comes up with the overall concept and headline acts, and the local teams will then identify additional celebrities, ambassadors, key opinion leaders and other features and mechanisms to tailor the show to their target audience.

Every show is also carefully designed to best amplify the mega campaign it’s promoting, explained Su Woon Ng, senior manager for content at Lazada. “For example, Lazada’s Birthday Super Shows tend to be performance-heavy concerts, while the ones for 11.11 usually have a more gamified format where brands are well-integrated within the segments. But the consistent features across all our gala shows are the interactive giveaways and brands’ seamless integrations within the show concepts. It’s a strategy that helps build our shoppertainment identity in the region,” Ng said.

Already behemoth undertakings, the production of Super Shows has become even more complex in the last two years as a result of the pandemic. While previous shows took place in front of live audiences, Lazada has had to shift these shoppertainment extravaganzas online with a hybrid format that includes pre-recorded performances and segments interlaced with Lazada’s many live customer-engagement tools, such as Voucher Rain, Balloon Rain and Shake It.

The virtual format has allowed audiences to still enjoy Super Shows in a safe way amid the ongoing pandemic and has even boosted traffic and guided GMV on the Lazada app. The challenge, however, is that viewers can leave at any moment during a livestream, which is why it has been of the utmost importance for Lazada to ensure all its virtual Super Shows are jam-packed with exciting and innovative content that engages with audiences and retains their attention.

This year’s 11.11 Super Show, for example, featured more than 80 celebrities, including K-pop group Seventeen, who wowed viewers across Southeast Asia as Lazada’s first regional Happiness Ambassadors. In addition, in Thailand, Lazada featured contestants from its first reality talent competition, LAZ iCON, during its 11.11 Super Show, much to the delight of fans in the country, who by early December had cast up to 20 million votes for their favourite contestants on the app. Similar localisations were made to other Super Shows across the region.

“All the challenges of putting together a Super Show and trying our best to make that magic happen are worth it because the end results are so rewarding,” said Trinidad. “Our Super Shows are celebrations and a way of giving back to our consumers for continuously supporting our brand.”

Sophia Hung, Ting Ting, Kim Martin Viray, Kris A. Aquino and Chanakarn Asawasathapon from Lazada’s regional and country marketing teams contributed to the article.

May 13, 2021
By Sherwin Loh

After years of creating localised short-form digital content for audiences, Singapore digital content company SGAG took a dive into the world of shopping and entertainment with Southeast Asia’s leading eCommerce platform, Lazada. The partnership, which was the first of its kind, involved a nationwide, millennial-targeted, content-to-commerce strategy and resulted in a surge of overwhelming success.

Named “KTHXBUY” – a variant of SGAG’s signature catchphrase, which is a portmanteau of OK, thank you and bye – the campaign combined retail with entertainment through fun, trendy and entertaining video content and experiences for young consumers on Lazada Singapore’s Weekly Bazaar LazLive sessions.

These sessions were hosted by SGAG’s seasoned content creators Maddy and Zina along with a rotation of special guests, and shoppers who tuned in enjoyed performances and special deals across a variety of product categories, including apparel, technology and cosmetics.

Southeast Asia Buys Into Shoppertainment

While shoppertainment has long been regarded as a pillar in China’s eCommerce market, brands, sellers and consumers in Southeast Asia only really started to experience its impact last year during the pandemic when it helped brands and sellers continue engaging with consumers virtually while allowing consumers to experience new levels of retail therapy from the comfort of their homes.

Even for Maddy, who has plenty of experience in event hosting, the Lazada and SGAG partnership proved to be “boundary-pushing.”

“We’re constantly challenged to find creative ways to weave in brand and product traits, and it has to go beyond just talking about the brand points. We’ve introduced the aspect of talking about products through games on livestream or sometimes even through character role plays to bump up the entertainment level and keep audiences engaged for livestream sessions,” she explained.

Zina added that it was critical to build rapport and trust with the audience from the get-go.

“When it comes to purchasing decisions, consumers will place more trust in people they’re familiar with, and as creators ourselves, we want to maintain that level of trust with our fans. And the only way to do it is through sustained, repeated sessions and engagement. It takes time to build that!”

The results spoke for themselves. The campaign originally ran for the three months following 12.12, and while this time is not usually regarded as a busy shopping period, awareness for Lazada’s Weekly Bazaar grew each week, driven by the deals as well as the entertaining content created by SGAG.

The surge was led primarily in the 18 to 35 age group – SGAG’s core target audience – who were drawn by the hosts and ingenuity of the content.

Creative Connections Between Brands and Consumers

For a lot of brands, the appeal of a dedicated weekly segment on LazLive conducted by SGAG’s well-known content professionals proved especially attractive since finding good on-air talent can often be challenging, and many businesses may also not be ready to run their own livestreams.

Since the campaign’s launch, there’s been a spike in clients reaching out to enquire about and engage in opportunities to participate as a key brand on Weekly Bazaar. Most expressed interest in seizing the top-of-mind recall associated with this campaign as well as the various conversion opportunities through placements on the livestreams and app interface. Homegrown bubble tea brand LiHO, for example, ramped up its participation in Lazada’s Weekly Bazaar and used the SGAG LazLive segment to drive engagement for three new drinks.

“This is a strong testament that the partnership has made an impact and hence brand partners are approaching us to be part of it,” said Shannon Sia, head of partnerships at Lazada Singapore. “This is why we are extending the partnership for another 12 weeks to bring more exciting brands into the campaign and to push shoppertainment to the next new level.”

Chua Yuxuan, head of eCommerce and partnerships at SGAG, said that his team was incredibly excited about the Lazada partnership being extended to July.

“Surveys we conducted showcased positive feedback and results, and I think it serves as a good baseline,” he said. “There’s definitely a lot more room for this model to grow, to continue tapping into the capabilities of both brands to drive a uniquely Singaporean shoppertainment experience, and hopefully soon, for the region as well.”

Lazada pioneered shoppertainment in Southeast Asia, and the success of its partnership with SGAG proves that the trend is here to stay. Whether it’s through live shows, organic social posts, sustained engagement, expert evaluations or other forms of content, creating new forms of entertainment and retail experiences will become increasingly important for those looking to connect with consumers.

Sherwin Loh is head of Singapore’s public relations team and vice president in the regional team.

By LazBeat Staff
Nov. 16, 2020

In a year that has seen Covid-19 create unprecedented challenges across all sectors of society, Lazada Group’s 11.11 Shopping Festival was designed to give merchants and consumers alike a reason to spread joy, said Lazada co-president and regional head of commercial, Jessica Liu.

At the Alibaba Global Pulse Press Conference on Oct 29 in the lead-up to 11.11, Liu offered an overview of the highly anticipated shopping event. She also explained how Lazada, Alibaba’s flagship eCommerce service in Southeast Asia, was fully committed to empowering micro, small and medium-sized local businesses to find new opportunities through e-commerce, while also helping international brands connect and engage with consumers from this diverse and dynamic region.

Liu sees eCommerce as the future of Southeast Asia. “Building a trusted, safe and reliable platform for consumers is our number one priority,” she said. “We have an unrivalled advantage in the region because our digital commerce infrastructure is powered by Alibaba’s technology, and our fulfillment and logistics capabilities are comprehensive and advanced in the region,” she added.

11.11 Performance

In the lead up to 11.11 and during the platform’s biggest retail event, Lazada’s capabilities were on full display. It is well known that 11.11. drives massive order volumes. And this year Lazada surpassed its 11.11 shopping festival records, with more than 40 million users and 400,000 brands and sellers participating in the one-day sale event across the region. The majority of these brands and sellers were local small-and-medium enterprises, and of these, more than 8,000 of them garnered over USD10,000 in sales in a single day. This yearly 24-hour shopping feast has been a golden opportunity for sellers to recover and regain growth in a year when retail has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic.

LazMall, Lazada’s premium platform for authentic brands and the region’s largest virtual mall, also broke record by exceeding its 11.11 sales performance last year in under half a day. It welcomed four new joiners, including Tefal, to its list of 26 brands who made the ranks of its LazMall Millionaires Club, which are brands that achieved sales exceeding USD1 million in one day. Electronics brand Samsung also became one of the first two brands to hit over USD10 million in sales.

Data insights from the eCommerce platform proved especially helpful to participating brands and businesses in the wake of new consumption patterns shaped by pandemic restrictions. For example, demand surged for health-related products, children’s toys, home décor, kitchenware and home-office equipment once lockdowns were imposed across the region. That prompted many sellers to stock up on these categories in the run-up to 11.11, Liu said at the Oct 29 conference.

This year’s blowout 11.11 success was also a shining example of Lazada’s immensely successful “Shoppertainment” strategy, a stellar blend of retail and entertainment. A month earlier, Lazada had kicked off its 11.11 campaign by announcing South Korean actor Lee Min Ho as its first regional brand ambassador – a move that underlined its continuing commitment to bringing A-list entertainment to shoppers on its platform. Not only did the mega sales event feature more than 200 million shopping deals, it also exploited to the utmost Alibaba’s digital technologies to create highly personalised and engaging consumer experiences. These ranged from data-driven product-discovery journeys and exclusive 11.11 catalogues to a star-studded show and an interactive game that allows users to win redeemable rewards worth close to USD2 million.

By launching its new game Happy Bounce in the lead-up to 11.11, Lazada saw increased user engagement of over 3.5 times as consumers spent more than 70 million minutes playing Lazada’s in-app LazGames titles. Along with Fun Farm, both new games saw players collect more than 20 million vouchers in 24 hours. LazLive, Lazada’s livestreaming technology, gathered over 11 million views on Nov 11 alone and saw more sellers adopt the service, which resulted in a 380% year-on-year growth in GMV generated from their sessions. In Vietnam, the platform’s Super Show gala event attracted nearly 10 million views across all channels, including TV networks, YouTube and LazLive.

By leveraging all of Lazada’s digital innovations and delivery capabilities, Liu said at the Oct 29 event that this year’s 11.11 would empower sellers and delight customers across Southeast Asia.  

“Together with local businesses and renowned brands, we have curated the best-value deals for the eighth edition of our 11.11 Shopping Festival that will no doubt bring non-stop happiness to our shoppers in the region so they can treat themselves and their loved ones this year,” she said.

Looking at the record-breaking results that Lazada’s 11.11 has achieved, Liu’s words rang true for businesses and shoppers throughout the region.

Featured photo above shows Lazada’s Jessica Liu on the panel with other Alibaba executives, including (from left to right) Alibaba Group’s chief marketing officer Chris Tung,  president of Tmall import and export Alvin Liu and the general manager of Cainiao Global Supply Chain James Zhao.