To commemorate its first-ever sponsorship of the Winter Olympics in 2018, Chinese tech champion Alibaba needed a campaign tagline that was big and bold. It had to do more than tap the core of the brand’s DNA; it needed to announce Alibaba’s presence on the international stage.
After a local team hammered out the strategy in Chinese, I took over copywriting duties, crafting the tagline and its accompanying manifesto video. The line had to ring true with Alibaba’s core function as an online marketplace that connects millions of buyers and sellers, many of them small-time entrepreneurs. It also had to connect with the spirit of the Olympics, a place where athletes from all around the world, most of them unknown, come together to share their extraordinary gifts with the world. The line needed to honor, almost as if raising a toast to the unseen heroes of the world.
