Sports Marketing: Chinese Brands Are On The Way

In the capital of Doha, Qatar, the fifteenth Asian Games were in full swing, and the Chinese delegation went all the way.

At the same time as sports competitions, it is a fierce battle between world famous brands with sports marketing as a weapon, and billboards, athletes' equipment and electronic equipment inside and outside the stadium.

World famous brands have laid their own advertisements, including Chinese brands.

In this competition, the Chinese team is becoming more and more active.

Platform for brand miracle

Lu Dawei, vice president of Coca-Cola, commented on Coca-Cola's sports marketing. If Coca-Cola did not talk about "love" with the world's most eye-catching sports events such as the Olympic Games and the world cup, it would not be possible to have today's brand influence.

The athletic field has not only produced many sports heroes, but also created many brand miracles.

The rise of Samsung Electronics in Korea is such a miracle.

In 1990, Samsung was also a small business for the Sanyo Corporation to produce black and white televisions.

In 1997, it was hit hard by the Asian financial crisis and its liabilities were as high as 17 billion dollars.

In the world ranking of brand value in 2003, Samsung has become the largest brand in Asia second and the world twenty-fifth with the brand value of US $10 billion 800 million.

Samsung produces almost 400 million dollars a year for sports marketing, accounting for 20% of its total marketing expenses.

At the same time, Samsung takes the TOP (The OlympicProgram) sponsorship program as the highest strategy.

In 2000, Samsung spent $50 million to become a top sponsor of the Sydney Olympic Games, and then increased its sponsorship amount to $200 million.

Samsung was also absent from the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the Turin Winter Olympic Games in 2006 and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Huge investment has brought greater rewards.

Sponsoring the 2000 Sydney Olympics only raised Samsung's brand awareness from 5% to 16.2%, and made Samsung the fastest growing brand in the world in the next two years, which greatly affected Samsung's position.

In addition to Samsung, Coca-Cola, general electric, Kodak, McDonald's, visa card and other top brands are frequent customers of these major sporting events.

According to the analysis of market economy experts, under general circumstances, the investment of 100 million US dollars and brand awareness increased by 1%. The large scale events such as sponsoring the Olympic Games invested 100 million dollars, and the popularity could be increased by 3%.

Sports marketing can make the brand better attract the attention of the public, and make the brand vivid, and directly promote product sales.

At the same time, sponsoring the influential sports events can show the strength of the enterprises to the outside world, so as to achieve the breadth that enterprises can not achieve simply by advertising.

Chinese brands are at the forefront

In the men's basketball match between the Chinese team and Spain in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the audience saw an amazing scene: the Chinese team wore Nike sportswear while the Spanish team wore the Chinese brand Lining's sportswear.

In 2006, Lining sponsored the Spanish men's basketball team to win the world championship in one fell swoop, and the Lining brand also expanded the international popularity because of the "bet on treasure".

In recent years, as China's world top competitions have increased, and Chinese athletes such as Yao Ming and Liu Xiang have made breakthroughs in the international arena, Chinese enterprises are paying more and more attention to sports marketing.

Among them, the number of Lenovo sports marketing campaign is the most attractive and the most difficult factor.

In 2004, Lenovo spent $65 million to become China's first TOP sponsor of the Olympic Games, and has a whole range of rights and interests to use Olympic intellectual property rights on a global scale.

This year, Lenovo sports marketing has been speeding up: supporting Turin Winter Olympic Games, launching 2008 Olympic Games models, signing Ronaldinho, sponsoring China net and snooker China open, IEST2006 E-sports competition and Olympic 1000 County line activities.

In October 24th, Lenovo signed an official market cooperation agreement with NBA.

According to the agreement, Lenovo will provide computer products for NBA, and will be allowed to use the NBA star image worldwide for marketing.

"We are also sprinting for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games."

"Sports marketing has become the core of Lenovo's international brand strategy," said Li Lan, vice president for global Olympic marketing by Lenovo Group.

Sports marketing has brought tangible returns to Lenovo: in April this year, Lenovo signed a contract with world soccer player Ronaldinho in 2005.

In the CCTV World Cup broadcast, Lenovo's Ronaldinho's advertising recognition ranked third, second only to the official Adidas and Coca-Cola of the world cup.

Meanwhile, Lenovo's share of China's PC market has reached a new high, reaching 35.7%.

The rise in popularity has made Lenovo's performance in the international market better and better. In some emerging markets such as India, Ronaldinho's LENOVO3000 sales increased by 100%.

"Through sponsoring the Olympic Games and NBA, we want to show the world a brand of technology from China, so that Lenovo brand will be recognized all over the world."

Li Lan said.

This is also a common dream of Chinese brands gradually becoming the forefront of sports marketing.

Risk control can go further.

Lining once said, "truly understanding the Olympic spirit is not so easy. Chinese enterprises need to do a lot to understand this spirit of sports."

Chinese enterprises keen to flaunt the "Olympic spirit" for sports marketing are also facing many risks.

The first is the pressure of funds. Whether sponsoring large sports events or signing famous athletes, they must throw huge sponsorship fees, while the latter is more astronomical.

According to the figures released by Coca-Cola, its matching marketing expenses are 3 to 5 times the "sponsorship fee" or even higher.

Li Lan believes that "most domestic enterprises have limited funds, so we must make good input and output analysis before making decisions."

Secondly, domestic enterprises generally lack experience in sports marketing.

Many Chinese enterprises have become the sponsors of the Beijing Olympic Games at a high price, but the Olympic Games are getting closer. These enterprises "don't know what else to do except to add an Olympic emblem before the product logo."

Similarly, in some major sporting events in China, some enterprises have only taken advantage of several advertising boards in the stadium or the LOGO on their sportsmen to get advertisements when they get the sponsors' identity.

There have been more than 800 Chinese business sponsors in the football professional league with more than a decade of history, but few people can remember.

"The biggest risk is that most enterprises only sell sports marketing as a hammer, but have not risen to the height of brand strategy."

Li Lan believes that sports marketing is an important part of the company's brand promotion strategy. Only when we integrate the requirements of the company strategy to carry out sports marketing activities, can we truly reflect the true value of sports marketing.

Facing the risk of sports marketing, Li Lan said, "this is the charm of sports marketing."

"When selecting sports events or sports stars that will be associated with Lenovo brand, we will conduct a 360 degree assessment of sponsorship events and sports stars from a range of evaluation criteria such as leadership, internationalization, brand connotation, audience fit and so on."

At the same time, Lenovo controls risk through targeted cooperation, determines the factors of remuneration and contract duration according to the star's performance and cooperation mode, thereby reducing risks.

"Although Ronaldinho did not perform well in the world cup, Lenovo's signing of Ronaldinho has far exceeded expectations."

Link: sports marketing supports Chinese brands

1984: Jianlibao, who was just born, invested about 400000 yuan in sponsoring the Chinese delegation and joined the Chinese team in the Losangeles Olympic Games.

This is the first true marketing campaign of Chinese brands.

1990: Li Ning Co sponsors Chinese delegation to participate in the Beijing Asian Games.

In 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, Lining was selected as the special equipment for Chinese sports delegation.

In January 2005, Li Ning Co became a strategic partner of NBA.

1998: farmer mountain spring has invested heavily in sponsoring CCTV's France World Cup.

Only one month, the slogan of "farmer Hill spring is a little sweet" is widely known. The market share has jumped from ten to third.

1999: Anta hired Kong Linghui, the famous table tennis player, as the spokesperson of brand image.

Sydney Olympic Games, China table tennis has achieved a grand slam.

The market share of Anta sports shoes is also ranked first among its domestic counterparts.

2002: during the world cup, Jinliufu signed Milu as the spokesman of the image for $400 thousand.

In the month of the world cup, Jinliufu sold more than one billion.

2004: Lenovo Group became China's first International Olympic Committee TOP sponsor company with us $65 million.

2004: Sinopec spent 800 million yuan to win the naming rights and track advertising rights of F1 China station from 2004 to 2006.

2006: Bosideng, the Chinese delegation to sponsor the Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Han Xiaopeng wore a Persian ski suit to achieve a breakthrough in the Olympic gold medal for men in the Winter Olympics.