Taylor Swift and Katy Perry Join China’s Singles’ Day Shopping Festival Craziness
The two stars are part of a big push for 2020's edition of the world's biggest shopping event
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12:46 AM HKT, Tue November 10, 2020
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As the anticipation for China’s biggest shopping holiday of the year continues to grow, Taylor Swift has joined Chinese livestream megastar Viya Huang to help sell products ahead of 11.11, or Singles’ Day.
In contrast with Kim Kardashian West’s livestream appearance with Huang in 2019, Swift’s slot was pre-recorded, though Huang expressed her hope that they can livestream together soon.
Swift’s appearance — which comes on the back of her in-person performance at 2019’s Singles’ Day Gala — is a sign that the Alibaba-backed “festival” is still reaching for global stars, even as travel restrictions make the usual international guest appearances unlikely. Another sign of this is that Swift’s once-fierce rival Katy Perry is on the bill for the 2020 Gala, due to air on the evening of Tuesday November 10 China time. Model Miranda Kerr and basketball great Magic Johnson have also been involved in 11.11 events.
Viya Huang has become one of China’s biggest livestream ecommerce stars, and looks set to play a central role for Alibaba’s TMall platform as part of the Singles’ Day shopathon this year. Last year, Kim Kardashian West joined her on a livestream and managed to sell 15,000 bottles KKW beauty perfume within the first few minutes of going live. According to Alibaba’s news platform Alizila, the livestream also drew in 13 million viewers.
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Swift is no stranger to Singles’ Day. Last year saw her come to China for the first time in four years, to perform exclusively for TMall’s 11.11 Shopping Festival in Shanghai. Her performance followed in the footsteps of some cringeworthy overseas celeb appearances at the event including Daniel Craig and Pharrell Williams.
In the wake of Covid-19, this year’s Singles’ Day will be closely watched to see if consumer spending rebounds. However, as with every year, new records have already been broken.
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Having started earlier this year (expanding to several weeks of sales), Singles’ Day 2020 broke last year’s first-day sales record within just 10 minutes last month. Furthermore, it seems like Alibaba’s push to use influencers has been extremely successful, with key stars Huang and Li Jiaqi already having sold over 1 billion RMB in Gross Merchandise Value.
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