Covid-19 made it important for consumers and businesses to use e-commerce to meet their needs. Shopee wanted to help show local businesses that they could benefit from e-commerce. However, there needed to be a change in mindset of users who know Shopee for great deals and entertainment, not so much for its commitment to support local businesses.
We launched ‘Shopee Celebrates Local’ across five SEA markets - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines - to help consumers discover, experience, and purchase local products, through increasing visibility for local sellers. Our strategy was to turn passive shoppers into brand advocates by letting them see, experience and contribute to Shopee’s purpose of empowering people and businesses through technology.
Shopee Celebrates Local, an online activation to get users to vote for their favourite sellers, reminded them of home and encouraged them to shop from local sellers.
In-app, we featured competition mechanics, seller stories on why they started their business, challenges they face and what they hope for their business, and specially curated shop vouchers.
We then announced the launch of the campaign through all our social channels where seller profiles were highlighted with a CTA to drive users to vote in-app. To drive further engagement, users could share their favourite seller if not featured, ensuring discover of more local sellers. We also showed behind-the-scenes content of the local sellers with a link to vote in-app.
Sellers' short video stories were featured in-app to drive shoppers directly to their in-app stores, while winning sellers were interviewed in exclusive livestreams on the Shopee app with real-time discounts to drive orders. All participating sellers receive incentives to further support their business growth, such as credits, store vouchers etc.
Centred on strong consumer and cultural insights, Shopee leveraged different platforms seamlessly across the contest user journey, strategically targeting users with different content on different channels to drive action. This resulted in order generation and high Gross Merchandise Value for participating sellers. It also garnered 180 pieces of coverage, with 34% from tier-1 media, with strong key message penetration. On social media, the campaign achieved >850,000 impressions with >10,000 interactions from users.
Overall, the campaign successfully engaged users to support local sellers, and in doing so, became a part of Shopee’s mission. At our 12.12 sale, 9 in 10 shoppers shopped from local sellers, with >1.2M visits on campaign microsite and 60,000 votes from shoppers.
