Alibaba.com: Painless

Hub highlight some oddly specific business problems in a series of spots for ecommerce platform Alibaba.com.

The series of commercials, made for financial TV channel CNBC, was directed by Jamie Maule-Ffinch. In it, quirky versions of real life business problems are shown via visuals and voiceover. For example, one vignette says 'George is a Chinese goat farmer. he wants to sell his whole flock to and English cheese maker, but dealing with shipping is tiresome' while we see George inflating a raft with a goat in it.

Other characters feature a sculptor of unicorn models who wishes he was bilingual, and a hot dog costume-maker and hot dog salesman unable to do business because of delivery times. All of the characters feature in the 60 second advert, with some getting their own 30-second spin-off ads on the channel, in which, like in the main ad, their problems are solved by the international business services offered by Alibaba.com.