Olympic Examination Report Of Adidas, Anta, Lining And Other Sporting Goods Providers

London's Olympic Games are not a stimulant to boost performance, but a magnifying glass for self-examination.

Conservative "release"

In recent years, sports marketing has become an advantageous marketing resource for enterprises to scramble for first, and Olympic marketing represents the highest level.

In the face of a time focused sports event spanning space, race, language and culture, every big business has to exert itself to win the favor of consumers and enhance brand awareness and reputation.

The Olympic year is supposed to be a year for the sporting goods brand to exert itself. It should also be a year of full harvest for sports brand.

But the reality is embarrassing.

During the Olympic Games, the sponsors from China fell to 2, the Acer of China Taiwan and the Crystal Technology Co., Ltd. of mainland China became the only remaining two Chinese enterprises.

And four years ago, more than 20 companies including PetroChina, Sinopec and China Mobile became IOC and sponsor sponsors.

Even more closely related sporting goods manufacturers, this year's advertising in the Chinese market is more rational and cautious than the last Olympic Games.

In the first half of this year, the total volume of traditional advertising sales of sporting goods brand in China decreased by 23% compared with the same period in the first half of this year. In the first half of 2008, the advertising sales of sporting goods brands in the Chinese market increased by 80%, according to information released by the information agencies.

In 2008, on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games, Nike was the champion of advertising in China's sporting goods market.

As early as the first half of 2011, China began to sharply reduce its advertising in the Chinese market, so that its ranking in 2011 dropped to sixth place. In 2012, advertising dropped out of the top ten in the sporting goods industry.

Adidas's advertising investment during the London Olympics is also not "giving power".

Compared with the same period last year, its advertising volume dropped by 45% in the first half of 2012, a drop of 35% compared to the 2008 Olympic Games.

More Than This,

It also withdrew from the Olympic TOP sponsorship circle and bowed to the two tier sponsors.

In line with international giants, advertising investment in local brands has also declined.

In the first half of 2012,

The increase in traditional advertising is the lowest in nearly five years, just 3.9%, down from 14.2% in the same period last year, which is also lower than the 14.4% increase in the first half of 2008.

"This year, the enthusiasm of enterprises is generally not high, which is related to the venue, and the decline in the enthusiasm of enterprises, and the prosperity of the domestic sporting goods industry."

The independent critic of shoe and garment industry, Ma Gang, told New Financial reporters that conservative, though rational, cautious and mature, is also somewhat helpless. "The biggest problem now is inventory digestion, marketing is not the most critical."

Of course, even so, enterprises are unwilling to look at the great opportunity of four years.

Today, Anta, the most powerful Anta, has had a long negotiation with the Chinese Olympic Committee since the end of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, replacing the two strong players of Adidas and China, becoming the exclusive sports of the Chinese Olympic Committee.

Sponsors provide champion equipment.

According to industry estimates, Anta's sponsorship at London Olympic Games cost around 600 million yuan, the largest single sponsorship in the history of Olympic Games in China, and the sponsorship cost has exceeded the threshold of TOP sponsors.

Lining, a traditional Olympic marketing champion, has always insisted on his "gold medal strategy". He has won the sponsorship of five "dream teams" of Chinese gymnastics, diving, shooting, table tennis and badminton, and has signed the world's top athletes and sports teams - Powell, Isinbayeva, Thohir Andersson, and the American diving team, the Argentina men's basketball team and the Spanish men's basketball team.

At the same time, Hongxing Erke sponsored three Olympic delegations in Iran, South Africa and Uzbekistan; Jordan designed Olympic award dress for 3 delegations of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Mongolia; 361 degrees not only signed the three Olympic delegations of North Korea, Belarus and Croatia, but also won the Olympic Games' hot Sun Yang before the Games; XTEP sponsors the Chinese synchronized swimming team and the US sprinter Justin Gatlin; PEAK also sponsored the Olympic team of 7 countries, including Iraq, New Zealand and Slovenia, which was second only to Adidas's 11.

Rough statistics show that six domestic brands sponsor over 1 billion 500 million national team uniforms and match suits.

Although most enterprises know what they are not necessarily able to bring, no one is willing to give up voluntarily.

Marketing "novice"

"Anta's Olympic marketing is to make all the required moves, not to be seen in the optional exercise, let alone the performance beyond expectations.

If I score, I give 70 points. "

Beijing key Road Sports Consulting Co., Ltd., CEO Zhang Qing, told the new financial reporter that the performance of Anta, the recipient of the Chinese delegation, can only be regarded as a rule of thumb. "At least it can tell you that the highest glory of China is presented by Anta, but unfortunately, the rate of return on investment is low, and the level of communication is low."

Objectively speaking, Anta has indeed completed its basic motion.

As a dream that surpasses Lining and is among the top brands, Anta, with the advantage of the Olympic dragon clothing provider, to bombard the minds of consumers with high frequency and intensive bombing, of course, can enhance the exposure rate of Anta brand and help to raise brand value to a certain extent.

To a certain extent, however, it has only accomplished a universal work.

When the Chinese delegation is born an Olympic champion, Anta will put the pictures of athletes wearing dragon clothing on micro-blog for the first time, and tell them about the Olympic situation. However, Anta's micro-blog marketing is only the case during the London Olympic Games.

Objectively speaking, consumers certainly need basic information acquisition, but consumers, who are new media users, have no expectation of using brand names to use social networks for marketing.

As a matter of fact, becoming a partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee may indeed mean quality assurance, which means a certain bargaining power. But it is undeniable that the bonus will be more reflected in the three or four or five tier cities, mostly for ordinary consumers; and whether for consumers in the first tier or second tier cities, or for real sports fans, the Olympic gold medal itself is fading away, and people's concern is not just about who wears the coat when the athlete wins the prize.

"The promotion of Anta brand recognition is recognized. Only in the COC (Chinese Olympic Committee) product development and marketing support, Anta still has room for improvement."

Ma Gang also believes that Anta has some regrets in its Olympic marketing.

On the contrary, experienced international bigwigs took lessons from the London Olympics to Chinese "little brothers".

Take Nike as an example, the two popular kings Liu Xiang and Li Na came out early, basketball, tennis, wrestling, archery, beach volleyball, weightlifting, track and field seven teams in addition to weightlifting, track and field performance is good, the other state of the embarrassing embarrassing situation, so that Nike's sponsorship this year seems to have some sad reminder, but this does not affect the "live your great" Nike "great body" popular.

According to Ma Gang, told reporters that Li Ning Co is similar to Li Ning Co. Nike has a group of people staring at televisions and holding events to send micro-blog. The difference is that micro-blog micro-blog takes characters as its main body, Nike is a picture without specific characters and even no location, and is also widely known as "the great body" today.

I have to admit that Nike is an enterprise that is good at sneak attack.

Although the Chinese gymnastic team and the Chinese table tennis team all belong to Lining's "sphere of influence", this does not affect their ability to ride out the pictures of the people without the impact of the "great body".

In fact, Nike uses two racquets to split a table with two kinds of striking visual images at the two ends of the table, with the inspiring advertising copy of "who says the best opponent can not be the best teammate", which may not be as effective as Lining's visual paste of Zhang Jike and Wang Hao pictures.

Obviously, when the local enterprises are still seeking to closely associate the brand with athletes and champions, and instilling their respective Championship attributes in the most straightforward form of advertising, foreign giants have long been using the interpretation of sports spirit to influence consumers' emotional sympathy with brands.

Besides, it is almost impossible to see the appearance of Chinese sporting goods brands in the field of professional equipment in the Olympic Games.

Compared with Nike, Adidas and so on, with the help of the high exposure rate of Olympic Games to strengthen their leadership in the professional field, Chinese brands are unable to take part in the games, and more still remain in the supply of clothing, such as sweat absorbing ability, and so on.

The only thing worth mentioning in this Olympic Games is Justin Gatlin, the sprinters of the United States, who won the men's 100 meter bronze medal in XTEP shoes.

"This is a problem of consciousness. Local enterprises often think that professional equipment may be hard to please, and they do not sell money in the market, or even people will wear it.

Most enterprises are products and products from their bones, and they can do the most at the same time. They have never moved to challenge themselves, create achievements and make efforts for athletes.

Zhang Qing believes that local sporting goods brands are mostly lost in the understanding level and consciousness level of this business.

Even at this Olympic Games, Sun Yang, who was widely praised by the industry for 361 weeks, was unable to win back the face of the Olympic marketing war of local enterprises.

In the international arena, the spokesperson needs a strict and standardized ROO (Return of objective) target return rate process. In China, according to Zhang Qing, although Lining, Anta and XTEP will have the resources to evaluate, the enterprises that actually use ROO to standardize the evaluation are relatively few.

"The idea of quick success and instant benefit of local enterprises, short sightedness and short-term thinking has not changed. This is something I am particularly concerned about."

In Zhang Qing's view, if we can't change this mindset and mentality, in the future, in the competition between Chinese brands and international brands, Chinese enterprises will "fight a losing battle" or even face the risk of being merged or other unfavorable situations.

Decisive battle

Generally speaking, sponsorship fee is only part of the cost of sports marketing.

The successful experience of sports sponsorship shows that sports sponsorship can achieve the best results only after the matching marketing funds which are equivalent to 3-5 times the direct sponsorship cost.

"Marketing is a long-term effect, like boiling water, which requires continuous pay increase to achieve results.

In contrast, the short-term impact is not big, and the performance improvement of enterprises is basically not reflected.

Ma Kong is cautious about the promotion of local sporting goods brands in London.

However, this is not necessarily what companies want.

Although Anta chairman Ding Shizhong publicly told the media in June of this year that we can grasp the opportunity of the Olympic Games, we can get the brand promotion. At the same time, we also think that the brand recognition will not be immediately reflected from the sales, but gradually release the effect. But the naked performance pressure of the listed companies should not be underestimated.

In the first half of this year, Anta's performance report showed that both sales and net profits declined, and revenue decreased 11.6% to 3 billion 930 million yuan compared with the same period last year. Net profit fell 17% to 770 million yuan over the same period.

In the first half of the year, the number of inventory turnover increased from 36 days to 50 days, the highest in history.

After adding 29 stores in the first half of this year, the total number of stores in Anta reached 7807, compared with 295 and 7844 in the same period last year.

This means that Anta has begun to slow down and some stores have been closed.

Meanwhile, due to the new wholesale discount rate of Anta's orders in 2013, the order volume in the first quarter of 2013 is expected to decrease by 20%-30% compared with the same period last year.

"Anta Olympic marketing capital expenditure is relatively large, it is expected that the company's performance will certainly not be ideal this year."

Liang Yuan, director of Research Department of Hang Ming securities (Hongkong), believes that in the case of Anta's Limited advertising effect in London Olympic Games, Anta's performance is lacking in fundamentals.

"From the trend, at least for the first half of 2013, it is unlikely that Anta will get better."

Ma Gang also believes that the challenge has been put in front of Anta. It not only consolidates the channel through deducting the dealers and optimizing the network structure, but also seeks to make up for the loss of CBA resources, Lining, COC will soon expire and lack of marketing resources.

Of course, Anta is not the only one that needs to prepare for the challenge. At present, the entire sporting goods industry is facing a dilemma of declining sales and overstock.

The external demand should deal with the unfavorable situation that the international giants such as Nike and Adidas quickly swallow up the local market, and we must seek a way to break through under the background of high income, rapid growth and rapid decline.

"In five years, there may be a lot of survival, but five live well."

Obviously, in the current big environment, Ding Shizhong has already made his own judgement on the industry pattern and trend.

Therefore, in the post Olympic era, for the local sporting goods brand that comes back to the quiet period, it will become the main theme to re choose the direction and strategy of operation and bold innovation and reform.

In this regard, Zhang Qing gives four suggestions: enterprise decision-makers should carry out a change of concept, and take a look at the situation to see a change in the development of this era. We must take the direction of brand value driving to emphasize the value of the brand; emphasize brand value, we must study sports itself, return to sports spirit, and adjust measures to local conditions in the retail channel of products.