Adidas Nike'S Olympic Sponsorship In China

Over the years, Adidas has always believed in "Impossible is nothing".

In China, the German company, which has been lagging behind the Nike of the United States, hopes to end its role as a catch-up in 2008. After paying the huge sponsorship fee of Beijing Olympic partners, it needs to find the first feeling immediately.

Start with the largest store in the world.

Adidas has just wrapped up a four story independent building on Sanlitun street in Beijing.

This golden section, once famous for bar street, will soon become one of the most fashionable shopping centers in Beijing.

In July 5th, the store, which was called Adidas's first brand center in the world, was officially opened.

The brand new products of Adidas and its clover and Y-3 have all entered this 3300 square meter space.

The sports shoes designed for the Beijing Olympic Games are displayed in a very prominent "Made for Beijing" space. Ke Ruijia, director of the Adidas 2008 Olympic project, told reporters that the Olympic team of the company designed 43 different sports shoes for the 28 major Olympic Games.

Adidas is looking for every opportunity to show the identity of the Beijing Olympic Games partner. This is the most important moment for China to win the game in China.

Before that, the Olympic sponsor was troubled by the frequent rush of rivals Lining and Nike.

Lining immediately co operated with CCTV after bidding for the failure of Olympic sponsorship, and put the Crystal Logo with Lining logo on the Olympic Channel host and the reporter.

And Nike held a big star, Liu Xiang, and even put him on the cover of the company's annual earnings.

In addition to Liu Xiang and Yi Jianlian, Nike also sponsored 28 large and medium 22 Chinese sports teams.

Lining also has the sponsorship of China's diving team, table tennis team, gymnastics team and shooting team four gold winning teams.

The sports teams sponsored by Adidas are volleyball teams, judo teams and football teams that are not regarded as favourites.

This makes many consumers unable to tell who is the real Olympic sponsor at a time.

Hu Jia, Zheng Zhi, Sui Feifei and Chinese women's volleyball team as the leading role of the "2008 together, no impossible" Olympic theme advertising, is the largest marketing campaign launched in single market in Adidas history, even more than two years ago in the German World Cup.

The Olympic advertisement, which costs a lot of money, has been covered by the subway in Beijing and Shanghai, and has recently won the Golden Lion Award for outdoor advertising in Cannes. However, its overall grey tone has always been mixed by the audience.

What's more, Adidas's selection of a series of Chinese athletes spokesmen has left people's sight due to poor performance or injury.

For example, Hu Jia, the champion of the men's ten meter diving platform at the last Olympic Games, has almost missed the Olympic Games.

With the Chinese football team stopping the world cup again, everyone's enthusiasm for Zheng Zhi, another spokesman for Adidas, will also be affected.

Female soccer player Ma Xiaoxu did not play very well in the women's World Cup in 2007 because of his poor performance, and this year's women's Asian Cup is also a miss.

These are enough to make Adidas originally want to rely on the Olympic Games to enhance the popularity of the people feel depressed.

It was not until July 1st that a notice issued by the China Advertising Association, which had not much administrative power, allowed Adidas to regain its pleasure.

It stipulates that from August 1st to August 27th, non Olympic sponsors can not be invited to serve in the advertisements, and athletes, coaches and officials who participate in the Olympic Games will serve as spokesmen.

Many brands will be affected, including Nike, Anta and 361 degrees.

Prior to the early June, the Beijing Olympic group held a special conference to call for the prevention of Olympic stealth marketing. Lining's logo has gradually disappeared from CCTV Olympic Channel hosts, reporters and columns.

"We are very happy," Ke Ruijia breathed a sigh of relief. "The Olympic Committee has worked hard to protect the rights and interests of the Olympic partners."

Adidas has indeed paid a high price for the sponsorship of Beijing Olympic Games.

According to convention, Olympic partners do not disclose the amount of sponsorship, and Adidas is no exception. But the price of Adidas has been widely used to win this seat at a price of 1 billion 300 million yuan, while foreign media generally speculate that 80 million to 100 million dollars is a reasonable number.

"The core of sports sponsorship is the stars, then the sports teams, the most peripheral is the competition."

Beijing Tai Du sports marketing President Zhu Xiaoming told this reporter.

In the just concluded European Cup in 2008, Adidas's two teams defeated Nike sponsored teams to break into the final, and Adidas's luck seemed good.

But in the Chinese market, if it wants to defeat Nike by the Olympic Games, it will obviously need more than just luck.

Mr Das hopes that the huge sponsorship fee will be gained, and the plan to expand the store and branding campaign with the help of the Olympic Games is underway.

At the beginning of 2006, Adidas global CEO Herbert Heiner (Herbert Hainer) announced that it would open 5000 stores in China at the end of 2010. Now, it is very close to this goal.

Nike and Adidas have been reluctant to disclose the number of stores in the Chinese market. When Nike opened its first direct store in Wangfujing last August, it was estimated that the two companies had about 3000 stores in China.

In the information provided by Adidas to this newspaper, as of the end of 2007, it had more than 4000 stores in China.

In the same period, the number of Li Ning Co listed in Hongkong was 5233.

"Nike is experiencing more than 50% growth in China". In June 2007, Nike CEO Mark Parker told Reuters that Nike would sell more than $1 billion in China within a year.

In the quarter ended in May 2006, Nike China's revenue was only about $600 million.

Of course, Nike also benefited from the continued depreciation of US dollar against the RMB in two years.

Adidas's growth in the Chinese market in 2007 was about 45%, and there was not much difference between the two sides in terms of revenue growth rate.

But no