Chinese Brand Enterprises: Marketing Stunt To The Olympic Games Feast

The Olympic Games are a competitive sports event and a comprehensive display of sports culture.

To achieve "Olympic marketing" and truly enhance brand awareness, the key lies in the combination of brand culture and sports culture.

Editor's note: "Olympic marketing" is a fulcrum of Chinese brands. With this pivot, it can pry China's thousands of consumers.

Many Olympic sponsors paid a lot of sponsorship fees. When the decision was made, they were faced with increasing pressure from partners, shareholders, board of directors and staff, competitors, and heavy marketing pressure.

Not long ago, Geely launched the LOGO design competition, and the Olympic champion was also included in the publicity materials.

Coincidentally, the release date of the new LOGO is the opening day of the Beijing Olympic Games, and this is also the 10th anniversary day of Geely car making.

How can many companies that have no chance to become Olympic sponsors prove themselves by ingenious creativity and catch up with the Beijing Olympic Games at home?

There are signs that a campaign of sports marketing is being launched.

In 2007, many enterprises privately called it the Olympic rush year.

The Weekend reporter opened the television to find that the CCTV sports channel program host changed the dress that the audience was familiar with on weekdays, was wearing Li Ning Co's clothing live broadcast program.

Olympic TOP10 sponsors Adidas probably didn't expect that Li Ning Co would use such a trump card to boost the Olympic Games: from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2008, all the hosts and reporters on CCTV sports channel will be wearing products provided by Li Ning Co.

CCTV is the holder of television broadcasting rights in mainland China during the Olympic Games, while the hosts and reporters are also a group of people with a high rate of appearance in sports competitions.

Lining used the curve to save the nation to continue his close ties with the Olympic Games.

Beijing will host the Olympic Games in 2008, the Asian Games in 2010 will be held in Guangzhou, and the women's World Cup in 2007 will be held in the four largest cities of China. The next ten years will undoubtedly be the golden age of China's sports industry.

It is natural for Chinese brand enterprises to take the sports industry express.

Olympic partners join hands

The Olympic flame, which has been going on for more than a century, will be lit in China.

In the process of integrating into the world economy, many Chinese enterprises deeply understood the sports marketing strategy for the first time, and understood the important link in the successful process of world famous brands such as Coca-Cola and Adidas.

Opportunities are equal, and successful cases such as Coca-Cola and Samsung, which have soared for the Olympic Games, have allowed many Chinese businessmen to chase the "Olympic business opportunities".

However, in practice, people who are calm down are somewhat at a loss -- the Olympic cake that carries the rules of the game and social responsibility is not as simple as imagined.

After all, only 30% of the sponsors and partners have achieved commercial success in all previous Olympic Games.

Lenovo and Coca-Cola came together to share the Olympic cake.

It is reported that the two sides signed a joint intention to jointly assist the Beijing Olympic Games, announced the formation of a market strategic partnership and launched a number of cooperation in the Olympic field.

In the future, there may be products of Lenovo in Coca-Cola's sales channels, while Lenovo designs and produces various authorized products for Coca-Cola, including desktop computers, notebook computers and other digital products.

At present, Lenovo is already seen in Coca-Cola's national promotional activities.

Lenovo said its Olympic marketing project, which is being prepared, is "the world's largest promotional campaign", including a series of TV ads and print ads to be launched.

In addition, Lenovo also has the "global champion plan". It plans to sign some famous and healthy athletes, hoping to help them become the brand representatives of Lenovo in different countries through their expected performance in the Olympic Games.

Lenovo is the only Chinese company in the global partnership of International Olympic Committee.

Lenovo and Coca-Cola have "strong combination of Olympic Games" in their strategy.

An official of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee's marketing department said that the joint sponsorship of Olympic sponsors and global partners is a major feature of the Beijing Olympic Games' marketization operation.

It's better to do better than to do it well

What's interesting is that from time to time, some gold coins were thrown out of the gold rush of Olympic sponsorship.

It refers to the fact that non sponsors of sports activities create a false impression on consumers through various marketing activities, and mistaken that they are also sponsors of events, or to some extent, related to events.

Nike is a master of ambush marketing.

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, Nike, not an Olympic partner, built a theme park near the Olympic Games. Please sign stars to show up and launch various activities. The results are quite far-reaching, but the real partners have eaten dumb.

Can today's Lining take advantage of Nike's 2008 advantage in Beijing?

With the increasingly perfect sponsorship rules, better ideas are needed.

"We signed the national gymnastic team, diving team, Spanish men's basketball team, Sultan national team and other athletes resources. Now we join hands with CCTV to gain marketing advantage from media resources."

Li Ning Co CEO Zhang Zhiyong recently spoke at Tsinghua University, explaining Lining's Olympic marketing strategy to reporters.

In fact, from the beginning of 2006, we launched the flying shoes of Jia Jia and Tian Yu running shoes, and joined hands with O'neal in August and then became two years' clothing sponsors of all the hosts and reporters of CCTV5. Li Ning Co's recent performance is indeed like its advertising words, "anything is possible".

Our surprise not only stems from Lining's innovation and growth, but also comes from the spirit that Li Ning Co and the two giants of the world sporting goods market are not lagging behind their rivals.

You know, Nike and Adidas were founded in 1972 and 1949 respectively.

In Zhang Zhiyong's own words, Li Ning Co, founded in 1990, is still a small company.

It is this small company that avoids the barriers of "Olympic intellectual property" with originality and realizes the first close contact with the Olympic Games.

The same "ghost" of sina and Nike also form a strategic alliance.

After the end of the world cup competition, the two sides will regard the 2008 Olympic Games as the new main battlefield.

Sina, a sports brand, though it failed to become a sponsor of the Olympic Games, it did not stop the pace of the Olympic Games. Only in accordance with the protection of Olympic intellectual property rights, Sina's "Olympic concept" contained many privileges that Sohu could enjoy.

Sina and Nike formed a strategic alliance, and Nike named the sina sports storm sports channel opened at the same time.

Gu Zhixiang, general manager of Nike China and Hongkong District, explained the motivation of cooperation with sina: "in China, more and more people are keen on sports, and we are working with sina to introduce more excellent sports culture to Chinese sports fans.

The number of Internet users in China is in a period of rapid growth. We are looking at Sina's experience in user resources and network marketing.

Marketing landing test sponsors

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 face many risks.

Those companies that have sponsored the Olympic Games are holding the sports ace, but they still haven't found the right contact points, but they have to pay tens of thousands of dollars per day.

This is a very dangerous signal.

Industry experts say, Olympic Marketing = sponsorship + advertising is a short-term behavior; Olympic Marketing = public relations + hype is a single point operation; domestic enterprises often mistaken for sports sponsorship in Olympic marketing, but they do not pay much money in sports sponsorship and speculation, but do not carry out other supporting work, and do not integrate enterprise resources.

This can not play the role of sports marketing, resulting in serious waste of resources.

Thinking is wrong, operation is prone to problems.

In fact, Olympic marketing is not only event marketing, hype, promotion, but also public relations.

It is a complex process of system implementation. It requires enterprises to redesign and locate their products and corporate image while they are sponsoring sports, so as to conform to the sports culture, and integrate the resources of enterprises. In a comprehensive way, the sports culture can be integrated into every aspect of the enterprise, forming the resonance between the enterprise and consumers.

The Olympic Games are a competitive sports event and a comprehensive display of sports culture.

To do well in Olympic marketing and truly enhance brand awareness, the key lies in the combination of brand culture and sports culture.