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Christopher Carl is US head of marketing for AliExpress, where he has worked since 2023. He’s also worked at agencies like Pulse Advertising and BBDO Worldwide, and he co-founded the men’s skin-care line HeTime.
Favorite project you’ve worked on? One of my favorite campaigns to work on was our summer collaboration with the UEFA Euro 2024. As a German, I was particularly excited about leveraging soccer—the de facto national sport of Germany—to help grow the AliExpress brand in the US. It was especially rewarding to see how our campaign capitalized on the rising popularity of soccer in North America, reflected in the record-breaking Fox ratings for this year’s Euro, especially among the 18–34 demographic. One of the standout features was the real-time participation we offered fans through in-app sweepstakes during each Euro game. By shaking their phones right after a goal was scored, millions of our shoppers had the chance to win prizes worth millions of dollars. This initiative not only captured the excitement of the tournament but also exemplified how we’re redefining the shopping experience.
What’s your favorite ad campaign? The 2010 Old Spice campaign, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The campaign was not just iconic, but it was one of the first truly viral ad campaigns. It redefined how brands engage with their audience by merging traditional and digital media in an innovative way. The commercial was not just witty, unexpected, and visually appealing; it was also a fun, carefully crafted piece of content designed to be shared a million times over. It broke free from the traditional advertising playbook within the men’s grooming space, showing a more lighthearted and engaging side of the category that appealed to both male and female audiences. This ad was a major source of inspiration for me personally when I went on to co-found a men’s grooming brand in 2019.
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One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: Pickleball is life.
What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? I’m particularly optimistic about the rise of interactive online shopping experiences that can make e-commerce more engaging and fun. Over time, online shopping has become routine, even mundane, and much of the magic of discovery and excitement that exists in real-life shopping has been lost. Marketers are working hard to bring that magic back through innovative, interactive features. AliExpress launched an in-app photo feature allowing users to snap pictures of objects in their environment and instantly find identical or similar items on our platform. The “Shake & Win” feature we introduced during our UEFA Euro Cup campaign brought an element of physicality to our app and tied the energy of live sports directly into the shopping experience. (We deployed the “Shake & Win” mechanism again during our Singles’ Day campaign, driving significant engagement and results.)
It’s an exciting time for the industry, and we hope to see more brands embrace the challenge of creating features that make shopping online more enjoyable. The key will be striking the right balance—launching innovations that are both genuinely useful and fun, without overwhelming or cluttering the user experience.
What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? The Marketing Brew newsletter! While I enjoy listening to Toby and Neal in the AM, I’d love a standalone Marketing Brew podcast as well.