Pinduoduo Temu advertising debut: spend 100 million yuan for 100 million US users to see

Text | Li Xiaoxia

Editor|Qiao Qian

Following the opening of the Canadian internal test, Pinduoduo's cross-border e-commerce platform Temu has new actions.

On the morning of February 13, Beijing time, the 57th "Super Bowl" in the United States officially opened, and at this top sporting event known as the "American Spring Festival Gala", Temu threw 14 million US dollars (about 95.5 million yuan) to buy two advertising periods and launched a 30S advertisement.

In the ad, a stylishly dressed woman uses Temu to constantly change her clothes and passers-by, complete with catchy lyrics, and finally lead to the slogan "Shop like a billionaire".

Temu's magic advertising song is easily reminiscent of the brainwashing song "Pinduoduo, Pinduoduo, Fight More, Free More" launched by Pinduoduo in 2017. Also in the same year, Pinduoduo appeared in the third season of "Extreme Challenge", and since then opened the road of "sponsorship madness" of variety shows.

Since its launch on September 1, 2022, Temu has mostly acquired customers through social fission gameplay and social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok, with few large-scale brand marketing moves.

The "Super Bowl" commercial debut or the first step in Temu's brand marketing, "Referring to the Pinduoduo method, Temu is likely to become a regular guest on major American shows." A person in the cross-border e-commerce industry said.

It is reported that the advertising cost of $700 per 30 seconds and an average of $23 per second not only set the highest price in the history of advertising at the event, but also became the youngest brand ever to advertise in the Super Bowl.

The performance of the US market is like a breakthrough or Temu's source of confidence to accelerate its expansion, which is also the reason why Pinduoduo does not hesitate to invest. In any case, this is not a good sign for competitors.

"Shop like a billionaire"

In addition to this year's absence, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala has been an important traffic highland for Internet companies to compete for in the past many years, and Pinduoduo, Tencent, Baidu, Tmall, ByteDance, and Kuaishou have all appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala one after another.

In the United States, in terms of communication, influence and coverage, it is a sports event such as the Super Bowl that can be comparable to the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. For years, the Super Bowl was the most-watched television program in the United States and gradually became the unofficial national holiday in the United States. Data shows that the Super Bowl 2022 U.S. viewership is 99.18 million.

From the perspective of domestic experience, Pinduoduo has become familiar with variety shows and New Year's Eve party sponsorship, and has successfully entered the mainstream crowd by relying on the sponsorship of more than 20 programs a year.

Considering the differences between overseas cultural backgrounds and user habits and China, Temu wants to copy the marketing path of domestic brands and expand its influence in North America, and the Super Bowl may be the best option that is safer and has more guaranteed traffic revenue.

After the ad was unveiled, Temu set off a discussion on the Internet, in addition to being curious about Temu's big money, that is, he was impressed by "Shop like a Billionaire". This slogan is not only full of American humor, but also includes Temu's cost-effective advantages, such as Temu's official statement: "Because of the price we offer, they can shop freely." Because of Temu, 'shopping like a billionaire' is no longer a dream. ”

It is reported that in addition to launching 30S ads on the official website, TikTok, etc., Temu's slogan in some app stores has also been replaced by "Shop like a Billionaire" from "Team Up, Price Down".

More directly, there is a surge in seller traffic. Before the opening of the Super Bowl, the official reminded sellers: it is estimated that the traffic will rise sharply on Monday (February 13), and sellers need to hurry up to prepare goods, especially for products with weekly sales volume greater than 10 in the store, and the number of inventory sellable days needs to be replenished to more than 20 days. A number of merchants also told 36Kr that sales have increased significantly due to the impact of launch.

Acquiring customers aggressively remains an important task for Temu in 2023, and the launch of shows like the Super Bowl will accelerate that goal.

In addition, the Super Bowl is as influential in Canada as the United States, with 2022 viewership data showing that almost one in every two people in Canada watched a partial or complete Super Bowl event, peaking at 11.4 million viewers at half-time.

With the Super Bowl, Temu Canada may be one step faster.

Challenge your opponents

In CICC's view, Temu's sponsorship of Super Bowl advertisements may signal that the company will start large-scale marketing to acquire customers in 2023 and try to break the mainstream market in the United States.

At the same time, CICC believes that Temu's sponsorship of the Super Bowl, in addition to expanding its influence and creating momentum for Canada, also shows that Termu has completed the initial accumulation of seed users, and the profit model has relatively strong certainty.

According to Data ai data, Temu had about 5 million DAUs in early February and 16 million MAUs in January, and the 7-day retention rate increased from 14% in November 2022 to 22% in January 2023.

Looking closely at Temu's 30-second ad, it is not difficult to find that most of the women's clothing categories appear in it, which is the core category of SHEIN.

36Kr previously mentioned in a report detailing Pinduoduo's performance at sea that Temu's GMV target for 2023 is $3-4 billion, and the long-term goal is to achieve or even exceed Shein's target volume of $30 billion in 2022 in the next 5 years.

Although many industry insiders said that Temu may face some pressure to complete this year's goals, Temu's shaking of SHEIN's status cannot be ignored.

CICC said in a research report that Temu's future logistics costs may be slightly lower than SHEIN, on the one hand, the return and replacement demand and inventory processing needs of clothing and accessories are higher than other categories, on the other hand, logistics partners such as Temu and Jitu cooperate, when the unit volume is large enough and the scale effect is more obvious, Jitu may partially share Temu's performance costs. At present, in terms of logistics experience, Temu has reached parity with SHEIN.

With Super Bowl Temu likely to increase its investment more, continued loss-for-growth in this business will be expected. But the noise stirred up by the Super Bowl commercials only makes it harder for opponents to sleep.