The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
Taobao prints farewell wishes on packing tape — 40K rolls for graduates
Taobao turns the humble packing-tape roll into graduation keepsakes printed with goodbyes from dorm objects; 40K rolls, 23M offline impressions
Taobao (淘宝)
What it had to solve
At June graduation Taobao, a marketplace students use constantly, wanted to be seen as a companion to their lives, not a transaction; rivals crowd the season with generic send-off ads.
How it works
Taobao's 2024 graduation campaign, made with agency TianyuKong, started from a precise observation: students feel the end of university not at the ceremony but at the moment they tape up their boxes. That made the packing-tape roll the perfect medium - the one object every graduate touches while saying goodbye to four years of belongings.
The agency printed copy spoken by the possessions themselves - 'Used-four-years thermos: may your passion and love stay warm' and 'Calculator: worries never belong to you, because they always reset to zero' - onto tape rolls, then handed them out free with free parcel shipping at 100 university Cainiao stations from June 20-30. Giant tape banners wrapped basketball courts, canteens and main roads, and one blank tape strip let students write their own endings.
The results, as reported by the agency on its case page: over 40,000 themed rolls distributed across 117 stations, 1,080 campus e-screens, 2.2 million students reached and more than 23 million offline impressions, plus widespread student sharing on social platforms.
The campaign later earned a 2025 Golden Mouse (金瞳奖) gold in social-event marketing and a silver in outdoor advertising, and it became a reference point for treating an overlooked logistics touchpoint - tape - as an emotional communication channel.
Why it lands
- It converts the most mundane logistics object into an emotional medium at exactly the moment the feeling peaks - the last box being packed.
- The copywriting trick is transferable: possessions speaking their farewells turns an e-commerce send-off into something students want to photograph and repost.
- The numbers are concrete and public: 40,000+ rolls, 117 stations, 2.2M students reached, 23M+ offline impressions, plus a 2025 Golden Mouse gold.
- It proves the 'touchpoint thinking' lesson - the packaging end of a marketplace is not waste to be ignored but a channel waiting to be used.
What it did
Agency-reported results: 40,000+ themed rolls distributed, 117 campus parcel stations, 1,080 campus e-screens, 2.2M+ students reached and 23M+ offline impressions; the work won a 2025 Golden Mouse (金瞳奖) gold for social-event marketing and a silver for OOH.
What you can take
Find the object users already touch at the emotional moment - the tape on the box rather than the ad slot - and let the ritual of using the product carry the message.
Since then
The campaign ran June 20-30, 2024 and circulated as a case study through Chinese industry media through 2025, when it won the Golden Mouse gold (social-event marketing) and silver (OOH). TianyuKong posted the full tape copy and film on DIGITALING, where it carried a 9.3 community score and a 2024 DIGITALING Award media-marketing silver entry. Taobao has continued using ritual moments of student life in later campaigns, and industry commentaries repeatedly cite the tape rolls as an example of finding media in the product experience itself.
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