In the context of new retail, how can brands seize the opportunity to take off? To address this question, Alibaba's Retail Link provides a new direction for many brands. As a one-stop purchasing platform serving millions of small retail stores, Retail Link is a key partner for brands expanding into lower-tier markets. Through precise channel marketing, Retail Link offers a shortcut for brands to embrace new retail and achieve a lane change to overtake. Against this backdrop, an increasing number of leading brands are choosing to collaborate with Retail Link, with frequent in-depth cooperation. Recently, Retail Link joined forces with internationally renowned brand Unilever during the April Super Brand Week, launching a new retail brand feast with significant communication volume and market influence. Retail Link and Unilever: Playing the Super Brand Week This Unilever Super Brand Week ran from April 17 to April 23. During the week-long joint marketing, Retail Link integrated all platform resources to maximize Unilever's influence among small offline stores. On the Retail Link platform, Unilever specifically launched several hard-to-get products for small stores during the Super Brand Week. The featured products were almost all best-selling items with millions in sales, and offered highly competitive purchase prices for offline small stores. To boost traffic, a gift-with-purchase promotion was also introduced during the week, keeping store owners' purchasing enthusiasm high. In addition, Unilever leveraged the Retail Link platform to carry out a series of promotional activities. On the first day of the Super Brand Week, April 17, Unilever used the "Alibaba Retail Link" app, frequently used by small store owners, to expand the event's influence through live-stream flash sales, red envelopes and coupons, and exclusive videos of popular stars cheering for Retail Link. Beyond the online buzz, Retail Link also integrated its nationwide network of city partners, using regional communication meetings and city partners' promotion to efficiently push Unilever's branded products down to offline small stores. With such intensive marketing tactics, this Unilever Super Brand Week achieved tremendous response right from the start. On the first day, April 17, Unilever's sales hit a new single-day record on the Retail Link platform, making it one of the most sought-after and discussed brands among small store owners during that period. It is expected that Unilever will become the largest supplier in the daily chemical category on Retail Link in April. New Retail Link Brand Week Tactics, Major Brands Respond Enthusiastically It is understood that "Super Brand Week" is a week-long exclusive brand carnival tailored by Retail Link for KA brands. By selecting best-selling products suitable for the channel, it helps brands seamlessly connect with offline small stores, quickly pushing down brand awareness and products to reach the largest market. In fact, before Unilever, Retail Link had already conducted "Super Brand Week" marketing activities with well-known brands such as Mengniu and Walch. In the recent March, during the Super Brand Week Retail Link created for Walch, through the event's promotional efforts, Walch's brand and products quickly reached hundreds of thousands of offline small stores in a very short time. On the shelves of more and more small stores, one could see the multiple hit products promoted by Walch. Statistics show that on March 20 alone, Walch's single-day GMV on the Retail Link platform reached 2.5 times its total GMV for 2017, with 10,000 stores selling through that day, opening up a surprisingly large new offline channel user base for Walch. Omni-Channel Marketing: Creating the Best Communication Platform for Brands It can be seen that "Super Brand Week" has become the preferred model for more and more well-known brands to cooperate with Retail Link. For brands, how to push down their brand and products to the 3-6 tier markets, which are difficult to cover through traditional channels, is a core pain point they need to address. Retail Link, which covers 1 million offline physical retail stores, provides brands with full-link marketing rights, precisely helping them solve this problem.

  1. More Core Resources In the "Super Brand Week" marketing, first, Retail Link can provide brands with more core traffic resources, including hot banners on the "Alibaba Retail Link" app, homepage splash screens, and "Big Brand Arrival" carousel, as well as promotion recommendations, ensuring maximum exposure among the platform's million small store users.
  2. More Channel Reach Second, Retail Link provides brands with more comprehensive channel reach. In addition to online brand live-stream interactions, there are offline city partner promotions, giving brands a precise way to communicate with target markets.
  3. Comprehensive Marketing Plan Furthermore, Retail Link's "Super Brand Week" omni-channel marketing also includes offline ordering meetings, influencer live-streams, and leveraging hot events. Retail Link hopes to adopt more diverse methods to formulate a comprehensive marketing plan for brands.
  4. Future Linkage with Tmall Finally, Retail Link is coordinating with Tmall, leveraging Tmall's platform advantages and resources to drive traffic, which can provide brands with greater imagination space in the future. With such 360-degree traffic support from Retail Link, brands will no longer fight alone, and will have the best marketing platform with more precise channels. The benefits for directly reaching terminal small stores and covering blind spot markets are self-evident. From the perspective of offline small retail stores, the "Super Brand Week" created by Retail Link in partnership with brands also provides more benefits for store owners. Not only can they get more value-added benefits, but more importantly, they can quickly purchase high-margin, fast-moving KA core brand products through this channel, many of which are exclusively available through Retail Link, undoubtedly creating greater value for offline small retail stores. From this point, Alibaba Retail Link, brands, and terminal small stores are all mutually beneficial, achieving a win-win-win model. At the 4th FMCG + Internet Conference, Yuntong, General Manager of Alibaba Retail Link Marketing Center, frankly stated that under the new retail trend, brands all have the opportunity to "change lanes and overtake." It can be seen that for brands, precise channel marketing such as "Super Brand Week" provided by Retail Link captures precise small store users, and behind these stores are the precise consumers that brands need. Retail Link provides sufficient momentum for brands to "change lanes and overtake." It is not hard to foresee that joint marketing between KA brands like Unilever and Retail Link will occur more frequently in the future. -END-