Pop superstar Taylor Swift helps Alibaba plug Singles’ Day, the world’s biggest shopping spree
- Swift is the highest-profile act to feature at Alibaba’s November 11 retail extravaganza since its inception more than a decade ago
American pop superstar Taylor Swift will headline Alibaba Group Holding’s Singles’ Day campaign next month in Shanghai, turning her considerable star wattage on the world’s largest annual online shopping spree.
By most measures the biggest recording star on the planet, Swift is the highest-profile act to feature at Alibaba’s annual November 11 retail extravaganza since its inception more than a decade ago.
She joins celebrities from Chinese singer G E M to Japanese voice actress Kana Hanazawa in Shanghai mere months after wrapping a similar Prime Day celebration for Amazon.com in the United States.
New York-listed Alibaba, the parent company of the South China Morning Post, co-opted Singles’ Day – an unofficial campus holiday for the unattached in China – and turned it into a national showcase for online bargains, netting more than US$30 billion of sales over a 24-hour period in 2018.
Swift, who succeeds the likes of Mariah Carey and Nicole Kidman on Alibaba’s stage, will be throwing her weight behind China’s largest and perhaps best-known corporation at a time Washington is trying to contain the Asian nation’s ascendancy.