The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2016
Taobao 2016 Second Floor: Mackerel Dumplings Sold 340,000 in One Night
Mobile Taobao's Second Floor used urban fantasy food dramas to sell products, opening a content e-commerce model.
Taobao (淘宝) · Yilife (意类广告)
What it had to solve
In 2016, Taobao (淘宝) user growth slowed, and Jack Ma (马云) publicly said GMV was no longer a core metric; Mobile Taobao (手机淘宝) wanted to capture the browsing peak at 10-11 pm, turn 'buy buy buy' into 'browse browse browse', and give niche good shops an entrance to be seen.
How it works
On August 10, 2016, Mobile Taobao (手机淘宝) launched Taobao Second Floor (淘宝二楼): from 10 pm every night, users could pull down the homepage to enter a night-market neon-style theater entrance, which disappeared at 7 am the next day. The theater's first program was One Thousand and One Nights (一千零一夜), updating one vertical-screen urban fantasy food short drama episode every Wednesday and Thursday at 10 pm; from Qingdao (青岛) mackerel dumplings to passion fruit, each episode told a story around a niche food, and users could place orders while watching.
This was a landmark experiment in Taobao's (淘宝) shift to content-based commerce. Kou Zhong (寇仲), Head of Mobile Taobao (手机淘宝) Marketing, found that 10-11 pm was the peak of users' 'aimless browsing', so the team selected Yilife (意类广告), which had only a dozen or so people, after a pitch, positioning the theme as urban fantasy after 'documentaries could not beat A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国), and warm-hearted films could not avoid Midnight Diner (深夜食堂)'; Taobao (淘宝) also specifically developed poplayer floating-layer technology, allowing the homepage to change skins without releasing a new version.
The effect was immediate: search volume for the first episode's mackerel dumplings rose 200 times, and about 340,000 were sold by 7 am the next day; Passion Fruit Dream (百香果之梦) made 240,000 passion fruits sell out as soon as they were listed. Digitaling (数英) summarized first-season data, saying 200,000 dumplings and 2 tons of beef balls were sold in 2 hours, some sellers' sales multiplied 150 times, and it was called a 'seeding miracle drama'.
Why it lands
- 10-11 pm was Mobile Taobao's (手机淘宝) browsing peak, and stories entered at the most relaxed emotional moment.
- The limited-time Second Floor (二楼) entrance created ritual and scarcity; missing it meant waiting for the next episode.
- Each story centered on real products; watching and buying were completed on the same page, making the conversion path shortest.
- The urban fantasy positioning avoided direct comparison with Midnight Diner (深夜食堂) and A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国), creating differentiation.
What it did
After the first episode, Mackerel Dumplings (鲅鱼水饺), was broadcast, search volume rose 200 times; by 7 am the next day, about 340,000 mackerel dumplings and nearly 5 tons of beef balls had been sold. After Passion Fruit Dream (百香果之梦) launched, 240,000 passion fruits sold out immediately. Digitaling (数英) statistics for the first season said 200,000 dumplings were sold in 2 hours, and some sellers' sales multiplied 150 times.
What you can take
Embed the purchasing action into immersive stories that appear only at specific times; ritual and scarcity turn 'browsing' into 'binge-watching', and when emotions are in place, conversion follows.
Since then
In 2017, Taobao Second Floor (淘宝二楼) launched subsequent seasons such as Night Playground (夜操场) and Backpack Monster (背包怪客); the Yuanmu pot (元木锅) mainly promoted in Night Playground (夜操场) saw sales multiply more than 50 times overnight; this 'order while watching stories' model was regarded as a representative case of e-commerce platforms' content-based commerce, after which various platforms followed with short-video and livestream content e-commerce.
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