Behind the scenes of Shopee's 9.9. campaign with influencers Xiaxue and Mayiduo

We are just days from 9 September and to celebrate 9.9, a shopping day of deals and discounts, eCommerce platform Shopee has roped in local influencers Xiaxue and Mayiduo to help it promote the day. 

In the ad, Xiaxue and Mayiduo don orange jackets and dance along to a catchy tune reminding consumers that they can buy "everything" on Shopee and claim cashback as well as shop for deals and win SG $100k on the platform. 

When MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reached out, Xiaxue said that she felt "very lucky" to have been chosen to be part of the campaign because of what a notable brand Shopee is. "Their jingles are always played everywhere. Sometimes I find myself humming the old jingles out of nowhere," she said. "To be one of the artists in a Shopee jingle has always been one of my biggest career wishes and I’m very honoured. Besides, I myself am a big Shopee user," she said. 

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Xiaxue added that other than the TVC, she is also doing Shopee live streams for the 9.9. sale which will enable her to interact with users directly. "I've also filmed a behind-the-scenes video on my YouTube channel to show my audience what the filming process was like," she said.  

When asked what filming the video was like, Xiaxue said that she did not actually sing the song and that she simply had to lip-sync and dance. "I’m really bad with my coordination so naturally, it was very stressful for me," she said, adding:

I went home to practice for hours just so I could get those seemingly easy moves right.

"Thankfully, everyone on set was extremely patient. For example, if we made a mistake, the director would never call us out. He would instead say we did a good job and suggest we do another take," she explained. 

"At Shopee, we adopt a hyper-localised approach to running integrated campaigns across a mix of online and offline channels in maximising our touchpoints with a local audience," said a spokesperson at Shopee about the campaign. "This 9.9 Super Shopping Day, we have engaged popular local influencers Xiaxue and Mayiduo, who strongly resonate with a local audience, to run exclusive shopping deals and live product demonstrations on Shopee Live," they explained. 

Shopee added that the point of the campaign was to embody the platform's key values of being simple, happy and together. "[The influencers] drive buzz, laughter and top-of-mind recall for Shopee’s 9.9 Super Shopping Day," it said.

This comes as influencer marketing sees its biggest threat yet in 2023 with the rise of deinfluencing. In the months of January and early February 2023, the term ‘deinfluencing’ saw a 2228% increase in mentions, as compared to the same period 30 days prior, according to social listening company Meltwater.

According to CARMA, the term is increasingly being used as a hashtag or a genre of content, especially on TikTok where it has amassed millions of views. Moreover, content creators are being more vocal about brands they don’t like to ‘deinfluence’ their followers against them. CARMA added that other commonly associated hashtags include ‘deinfluencer’ and ‘antihaul’. Mentions of deinfluencing are also highest among the Millennial group (25-34), and second-highest among Gen Z’s (18-24).

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