The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2023
Tmall 618's 'Last Item' is an end-credits film about people, not products — 6.2B exposures
At the sale's close, Tmall turned a bargain-hunt nudge into a film built entirely from movie end credits, reminding shoppers of the people they nearly forgot.
Tmall (天猫, Alibaba)
What it had to solve
By the final days of Tmall's June 618 festival most carts were already full, so 'last-chance to buy' messaging had stopped working. The brand needed a fresh reason for lagging shoppers to act, without simply shouting discounts.
How it works
Tmall's June 618 sale runs for weeks, so by its last two days most shoppers have already emptied their carts; the audience still scrolling is in bargain-hunting mode, chasing leftovers. Tian Yu Kong's reframe: what gets left behind is not only products, but people. 'Last but not least' became the campaign's engine.
The film is built entirely as movie end credits, titled 'Last but not Least'. Names and roles scroll upward — photographers, stylists, pet wranglers, brands — while the rolling list shows 'last items' for people worth remembering: Father's Day, Dragon Boat Festival, graduation, an activity partner. Every credit line carries a real human reason to buy.
Tmall counted 620M+ total exposures, 21M+ video views and over 4.8M interactions, with the topic '#618的最后一件' drawing 520M reads on Weibo. A companion UGC push with around a hundred brands and merchants invited shoppers to name their own final item, collecting tens of thousands of submissions.
The campaign closed the festival on an emotional note rather than a discount note: 'we can always wait for the next sale — the people worth caring for should be cared for this time.' The industry recognised the craft: the film won Gold in the Video category at the 2024 Roi Festival, and the credits-device became the case's signature.
Why it lands
- It solved a real end-of-sale problem — tired shoppers with full carts — by changing the reason to act from price to people.
- Movie end credits are universally understood as 'this is over', which made the deadline tangible without a countdown graphic.
- Casting real life moments (Father's Day, graduation, festivals) turned generic discount media into personalised gift logic.
- The credits format made brands, merchants and crew equal characters, enabling a 100-brand UGC extension that multiplied reach.
What it did
Tmall reported 620M+ total exposures, 21M+ film views and 4.8M+ interactions; topic '#618的最后一件' reached 520M reads on Weibo. The UGC drive gathered tens of thousands of submissions, and the film took a Gold at the 2024 Roi Festival in Video.
What you can take
Commerce peaks are emotional moments too: matching a deadline to what people actually care about gives a price-driven sale a story — and gives the ending itself the job of the ad.
Since then
The 2023 'Last Item' became Tian Yu Kong's signature commerce-storytelling case and a Roi Gold, cited in the agency's 2024 awards haul, which included the festival's Agency of the Year. Tmall kept pairing festival momentum with emotional framing in later campaign seasons, and the credits-film format remained a reference point in Chinese marketing commentary about ending sales with meaning rather than noise.
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