Jump Into the Story—Celebrating AliExpress’s 15th Anniversary with the AR TikTok Effect
Explore the behind-the-scenes of our collaboration with Aliexpress, celebrating the brand’s 15th anniversary with an interactive TikTok AR Effect.
After 15 years in the market, AliExpress has firmly established itself as a global e-commerce giant, connecting millions of customers with a variety of products worldwide. To celebrate the next big milestone, the brand embraced cutting-edge technology and turned its anniversary campaign into an interactive, shared experience with Augmented Reality.
Collaborating with Aliexpress, we brought the brand’s story to life through an AR Game on TikTok, making users an active part of the celebration.
The Idea Behind The Campaign
While creating the AR Effect, we focused on two factors: interactivity and storytelling. The experience was supposed to tell the story of Aliexpress, while directly engaging users into the campaign, placing them at the center of the experience.
AR allowed the brand to transform the celebration into an online, participatory event, signifying the crucial role that the customers played in its success.
The campaign empowered users to create personalized content on their own profiles, making the experience feel unique and accessible, increasing its shareability. By using AR, the campaign created a genuine sense of community, making users feel like active contributors to both the celebration and the brand’s journey.
The AR Effect
To bring this concept to life, we created an immersive AR game using TikTok’s head-tracking feature, turning the user into a living controller. The gameplay followed a popular and easy-to-grasp format: Jump as high as possible, dodge obstacles, and collect points.
As users progressed through levels, they experienced a fast-paced, visual journey through AliExpress’s history—from its founding days to its present-day status. This gamified approach entertained users while also educating users about the brand’s evolution in a memorable way.
To reward engagement, users who completed the game received a special promo code redeemable on the AliExpress website or app—blending entertainment with a tangible e-commerce benefit.
The Platform
TikTok turned out to be the ideal platform for this activation. As a home of creativity and community-driven content, TikTok connects users based on shared interests, age groups, and hobbies. This made it the perfect space for AliExpress to engage both loyal customers and new audiences alike, making the anniversary a shared achievement for the brand and its customers.
By integrating an interactive AR Effect, the campaign not only celebrated the brand’s journey but also encouraged users to actively take part in the story, driving both engagement and brand awareness.
Embracing AR to Connect with Audiences
By blending storytelling, gamification, and social engagement, the AliExpress 15th Anniversary AR Effect became more than just a celebration. Rather than simply looking back on the brand’s success, the campaign focused on building a deeper emotional connection with its audience by making them feel like contributors to the journey.
Augmented Reality served as the perfect medium for this goal, offering a creative and playful way to bridge the gap between the digital and emotional. Instead of telling users what the brand has achieved, we invited them to relive that story themselves: Level by level, jump by jump.
This campaign is a powerful example of how brands can use immersive technology to go beyond traditional marketing, turning major milestones into interactive experiences. By making the audience part of the narrative, we not only drove engagement but also reinforced the idea that the success of AliExpress is something shared—with every customer, every purchase, and now, every player.
