Brands, I’m part of your marketing team: Alibaba CMO

Global brands and agencies have long complained about the difficulty of accessing data from China’s media platform trifecta of BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent). But Alibaba CMO Chris Tung suggests that view is changing.  

In fact, in this video, Tung goes so far as to say a large part of his job is really working on behalf of brands to build their profiles on his platforms. “Essentially I’m part of their marketing team” he told Campaign Asia-Pacific.

He points to Alibaba's launch of Uni-Marketing, a suite of tools that lets marketers analyse live data to map customer behaviours and lifestyle patterns through their product journey in a more actionable way. Tung says to look no further than the recent 11.11 shopping festival, where brands could gather “a big data pool” about customers and potential customers and generate a wealth of leads.

Weighing in on a string of retail acquisitions from Alibaba, Tung hinted that this is only the beginning of an inevitable melding between online and offline in a new retail environment. “I expect more and more partners are going to jump on the bandwagon and work with us,” he said.

Tung also elaborated on how the 11.11 festival has evolved from marketing idea to a annual celebration, much closer to a holiday like Christmas than a B2C sales opportunity.

Watch out for Tung’s assessment of Alibaba’s Singles Day extravaganza this year, in another video coming soon.