11月11日，华盛顿州苹果委员会(Washington Apple Commission)主席托德弗莱霍弗(Todd Fryhover)头一次参加中国双十一“光棍节”活动，希望能在24小时之内卖掉120万个来自华盛顿州的苹果。
帮他排忧解难的是营销巨头阿里巴巴(Alibaba)。华盛顿州的苹果在这家中国电商公司旗下的“天猫”(Tmall)网站销售。在中国消费者对国内农产品存在健康担忧的情况下，许多外国食品品牌找到了现成的市场，华盛顿的苹果正是其中之一。
“光棍节”起源于上世纪90年代初学生们庆祝单身的活动，2009年被阿里巴巴重新定义为疯狂消费的大众节日。越来越多的外国公司开始加入这一盛事，希望利用该节日进行市场推广，向中国公众推介自己的品牌。
弗莱霍弗希望每个中国人都对“华盛顿州的苹果有可重复的、奇妙的体验”。在华盛顿州450家种植园所种苹果的60个出口国名单中，中国位列第六，但弗莱霍弗认为明年中国将跃升至第一位。
或许他是对的。午夜时分，阿里巴巴北京礼堂的大屏幕显示，24小时内通过阿里巴巴各平台售出的商品总值达到143亿美元。
为了进入中国市场，越来越多的西方企业正在转向电子商务，这是比开设连锁店或者落户中国难以把握的零售市场更快、更廉价的方式。
为了实现这一点，它们正学着爱上中国互联网三巨头——人称BAT的阿里巴巴、互联网搜索公司百度(Baidu)、以及社交媒体及游戏公司腾讯(Tencent)。它们已经开始以令人惊叹的速度主导中国的经济生活，提供从零售、金融到运输等各种服务，并且正在进入医疗保健甚至农业。
短短几年间，三巨头成功地垄断了日常生活中所有可以被放到web上、面向公众销售的方面。“它们都想占有这些客户，时时刻刻与他们在一起，无论客户是在看视频、与朋友聊天、买菜、还是去餐厅吃饭，”北京安联思商务顾问公司(Alliance Development Group)的克里斯迪安杰利斯(Chris DeAngelis)称。
中国的互联网巨头正逐渐发展为美奇金投资咨询公司(J Capital Research)的分析师杨思安(Anne Stevenson-Yang)所称的“科技系列企业”(tech Keiretsu)。这类企业是指20世纪主导日本经济、插足多个行业的国家冠军企业。“当企业在中国发展到如此大的规模时，公私差别不再那么重要，”她称，“在现实意义上，这些企业成了互联网部。”
但是，激烈的竞争意味着，外国商家在招揽中国中产阶层买家时有很多选择。由于担心国产假货，这些消费者热衷于购买进口商品。
阿里巴巴为卖方提供了很多选择，其中包括与eBay类似的免费平台淘宝(Taobao)——基本上就是一个网上跳蚤市场。多数大品牌的店都开在类似于亚马逊(Amazon)的天猫上，让这些品牌更好地控制其销售和供应链。宝洁(Procter & Gamble)是首家进驻天猫的财富500强公司。据宝洁副总裁Jasmine Xu称，自2008年进驻天猫以来，该公司在该平台上的销售额增长了100倍。
Xu称，在今年的双十一“光棍节”，宝洁在6分钟内就完成了1亿元人民币（合1600万美元）的销售额，而去年用了8小时才达到这一销售额。“除了加大销售外，（天猫）还是推动品牌建设的关键平台，”她称。
然而，也有一些商家不愿意进驻阿里巴巴。阿里巴巴带来了庞大的在线客流量，但一名咨询顾问称，打折的压力以及泛滥的假货意味着“很难在天猫上保护品牌”。
不过，它们还有其他很多选择。京东(JD.com)——阿里巴巴的竞争对手，其市场份额正日益扩大——吸引了众多品牌进驻。
与此同时，腾讯的社交媒体app微信(WeChat)正伺机而动。微信拥有逾5亿用户，发展迅速。由于担心广告和产品泛滥引起用户反感，腾讯迄今搁置这款app的“货币化”进程。
但是，在微信上做广告只是吸引注意力的方式之一。很多企业发现，单单利用微信进行口碑营销就可以获得巨大的市场推广成功。
例如，热衷英国乡村生活的粉丝可以加入英式烤箱标志性品牌AGA的微信群，观看使用AGA烹饪的视频，交换有关产品的信息，甚至一时冲动买下一台烤箱——借助在聊天室嵌入商铺的软件。
“微信的用途异常广泛；就市场营销而言，它比Facebook更好，也比WhatsApp更好，”北京易思闻思公共关系咨询公司(Eastwest Public Relations)董事长金宝(Jim James)称。该公司设计了AGA的微信群。
“相比其他一些接触互联网时间更长的国家，中国在很多方面更加融入网络。”
On November 11, Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission, joined China’s Singles Day celebration for the first time, hoping to sell 1.2m apples from Washington State in 24 hours.
To help him out was the marketing juggernaut of Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce company, where Washington apples are sold through branded website Tmall, one of a number of foreign food brands that are finding a ready market in China amid health scares over domestic produce.
Singles Day, which began as a student celebration of singledom in the early 1990s, was reinvented by Alibaba in 2009 as a mass festival of conspicuous consumption, and more and more foreign companies are joining, hoping to use the holiday as a marketing exercise to get their brands out to the Chinese public.
Mr Fryhover wants everyone in China to have “a repeatable, wonderful experience on Washington apples”. China is number six on the list of 60 countries that import apples from Washington’s 450 growers, but he thinks it will be number one by next year.
He may be right. By midnight, as a video billboard in Alibaba’s Beijing auditorium showed, $14.3bn of merchandise had been bought via Alibaba’s platforms in 24 hours.
Western companies are increasingly turning to online commerce, a cheaper and faster way to get to market than setting up store chains or penetrating the opaque retail market in China.
To do this they are learning to love China’s internet conglomerates, informally known as BAT — Baidu, the search company, Alibaba and Tencent, the social media and gaming company. The three have begun to dominate economic life in China with amazing speed, doing everything from retail to finance to transportation, and moving into healthcare and even agriculture.
In just a few years, the BAT conglomerates has been able to monopolise every aspect of daily life that could conceivably be put on the web and sold to the public. “They all want to own the customer, they want to be with them every second of the day, when they watch a video, chat to their friends, buy groceries, or go to a restaurant” says Chris DeAngelis from the Beijing-based Alliance Development Group.
China’s internet giants are becoming what analyst Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital Research calls “tech Keiretsu”, referring to the national champions that dominated the Japanese economy in the 20th century with interests in multiple industries. “When companies are this big in China, the difference between public and private is not that important,” she says. “For all intents and purposes these companies have become the ministry of the internet.”
But fierce competition means foreign sellers have many options for courting Chinese middle class buyers who are looking to buy imported goods abroad due to concerns about home-made counterfeit goods.
Alibaba offers a number of options for sellers, including the free eBay-like platform Taobao, which is basically an online flea market. Most big brands set up on Tmall, which resembles an Amazon market place, a platform where big brands can set up stores and have more control over their sales and supply chains. Tmall’s first store from a fortune 500 company was Procter & Gamble, launched in 2008, which has grown 100 times since then, according to P&G vice-president Jasmine Xu.
This year on Singles Day Ms Xu says that P&G made its first Rmb100m ($16m) in six minutes, compared with eight hours last year. “[Tmall] is a key platform to drive brand building in addition to sales,” she says.
Some merchants have been loath to list on Alibaba, however. It gets vast online traffic, but the pressure to discount and the prevalence of fakes means it is “hard to protect a brand on Tmall,” says one consultant.
But there are plenty of alternatives. JD.com, Alibaba’s rival, which is increasing its market share, has attracted a number of brands to its online store.
Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is Tencent’s social media app WeChat, which has more than 500m users and is growing rapidly. Fearful of flooding the app with advertising and products, Tencent has been holding back on “monetising” WeChat.
But advertising on WeChat is just one way of getting attention, and many companies have found they can win huge marketing success simply by using WeChat for word-of-mouth marketing.
Fans of English country living, for example, can join a WeChat group devoted to Aga cookers, the iconic English oven brand, watch videos about cooking on an Aga, swap messages about it, and, thanks to the software which embeds the store in the chatroom, even buy one on impulse.
“WeChat is unusually versatile; its better than Facebook, better than WhatsApp for marketing,” says Jim James, head of EastWest Public Relations in Beijing, which designed the Aga WeChat group.
“China in many ways is more switched on to the internet than other countries which have had it for longer.”
