Unilever, Alibaba Partner on Digital Marketing Campaigns

Need to Know

• Unilever will leverage Alibaba Cloud’s and AI technologies to optimize its online and offline demand generation campaigns and targeted marketing.
• Alibaba’s tools will be used at Unilever’s online stores on the Alibaba Taobao and Tmall platforms.
• Alibaba’s robust suite of insight tools will help Unilever fine-tune its customer journey, as well as its supply chain operations.

Analysis

Online e-commerce giant Alibaba has partnered with Unilever in a move that will allow the latter company to leverage Alibaba Cloud’s AI tools for its marketing needs, the two businesses announced on Thursday.

It’s a shrewd move on the part of Unilever: Large brands have been increasingly turning an eye to established e-commerce platforms with strong data and analytics tools to better position themselves in a competitively digital-focused marketing and sales economy.

Unilever will use Alibaba Cloud’s artificial intelligence and cloud-based information tech to access and act upon a greater suite of customer data, including buying patterns and shopping behavior, allowing Unilever to better optimize its customer experience and targeted digital marketing campaigns. Aided by AI technology, the company also may be able to more precisely predict and quickly respond to changing customer buying habits across multiple platforms. Additionally, these insights will benefit Unilever’s supply chain and delivery and shipping processes.

The tools being offered by Alibaba include Dataphin, a unified platform as a service (PaaS) platform for information processing and management; Analytic DB, an online analytical processing (OLAP) database cloud service; and Quick BI, an intelligent business analysis suite.

“Customer buying patterns are ever-changing; when and where they buy has caused marketing to become even more agile and precise in order to stay relevant and reduce marketing waste,” said Fang Jun, VP of Data and Digital for Unilever China (the partnership is centered in Unilever’s Chinese market). “The use of Alibaba Cloud’s cutting-edge technology will ensure that our customers enjoy even more value from their relationship with the Unilever brand, through relevant campaigns and activities based on true insights into their buying preference.”

Unilever also plans to use Alibaba Cloud technology to support an optimized brand experience at its online stores on the Alibaba Taobao and Tmall e-commerce platforms.