From Marketing To Channels, How Do International Sports Brands Stimulate Consumer Demand In 2018?

Recently, the US sports brand Nike released its second quarter financial report in fiscal 2019.

In the three months ended November 31st, global revenue grew by 10% to $9 billion 374 million over the same period, exceeding the general expectation of 9 billion 180 million dollars.

Net profit increased by 10% to 847 million dollars.

From the global division, the second quarter Nike Greater China led by 26% growth (excluding exchange rate factor growth rate of 31%), and revenue reached 1 billion 544 million US dollars, which is Nike's double digit growth for eighteen consecutive quarters in Greater China.

In the industry view, although the sports brand is in the adjustment stage, the revenue growth has entered the bottleneck stage, but the international sports brand still can rely on the brand's own accumulation, marketing means, channel diversity, retail form and ability to step up the revenue.

Signing stars to participate in design and joint names

Healthy lifestyles and leisure and comfortable clothing demand are the direction pursued by young people nowadays. For this reason, new technologies, new products and new gameplay are springing up throughout the sports industry.

Stars such as Kanye, Rihanna and Virgil have joined the sports industry.

Among them, Puma signed Rihanna, Kardashian family member Kelly Jenna and American Idol Selena Gomez, relying on the investment in women's products, leading the women's sports market, at the same time, it has become one of the big winners in sports fashion circles.

Puma's 2018 financial report shows that its clothing category is outstanding, making up for its lack of footwear.

In addition, Puma has made great efforts in joint cooperation, from MCM to PEPSI, to BT21 in South Korea and Bobbi at the end of the year, constantly attracting consumers' attention with fashionable marketing methods.

Adidas's StanSmith, NMD, Creeper, YEEZY, THETEN and other products are constantly being introduced.

Boost technology has increased Adidas's share of the North American sports shoes market from 6.3% in 2016 to 11.3% in 2017.

In 2017, Adidas sold 40 pairs of premium shoes with Boost technology for $7000 and sold them out in five minutes.

Nike has boldly chosen ColinKaepernick as spokesperson for "Just Do it" 30th anniversary.

It is understood that in 2016, Colin Kaepernick felt that the police had a tendency to enforce injustice on handling ethnic minorities. When the national anthem played the national flag in the NFL competition, they were kneeling down on one leg to protest, hoping to arouse the attention of the United States to the injustice of police enforcement.

This behavior has led to escalating contradictions and even attracted the attention of the president of the United States.

The media believes that the use of controversial figures as spokesmen "highlights Nike's strong courage, innovation and mastery in marketing."

From the promotion effect, the advertising monitoring agency has given an estimate of US $45 million.

It is worth mentioning that, from the marketing of Nike classic shoes AJ, we can see the industry trend in 2018: there are no obvious breakthroughs in products, but depending on completely different marketing methods and the introduction of new matching colors and joint names, they can still bring good returns to the brand.

Online and offline full channel sales

In the past three years, Nike, ADI, FILA, Puma, UA, Reebok and ASICS have opened flagship stores in Shanghai, Beijing, and sports brands such as Reebok and Umbro, which once fade out of people's sight, have been reopened in the world.

According to JamesGrigsby, general manager of Adidas China key city (Shanghai), investment in Shanghai and other key cities can effectively influence and radiate more extensive areas.

JamesGrigsby revealed that at present, Adidas has more than 11000 stores in China, and there are about 1000 new stores open every year.

This means that there are 2 to 3 new stores in Adidas open every day on average.

It is undeniable that in recent years, the international sports brand has strengthened the DTC (directly to the consumer) mode. Creating a flagship store or brand center with the concept of "experience + individuation" has become a common phenomenon in the industry.

Apart from Adidas, Fei le and Nike have opened brand centers one after another.

In November 23rd last year, the first door store opened in Fuzhou. The new store, located in the East hundred center of Fuzhou, will have four categories, FILA, FILAKIDS, KILAFUSION and FILA ATHLETICS.

Among them, the trend sports brand FILA FUSION and high-end professional sports brand FILA ATHLETICS are just launched.

It is understood that the store will make changes in design concepts, product lines and personalized customization to enhance consumer experience.

HouseofInnovation Nike Shanghai 001 is Nike's brand center recently.

The brand center was upgraded from Nike's first direct store in China.

It is worth mentioning that many new products released here are first launched in China.

In addition to the brand center, Nike also takes Sneakers App as the core and takes the lead into the high-speed development of e-commerce, far away from the pre emptive Adidas.

There is still ambiguity in brand marketing positioning.

Although sports brand giants perform well, there are still some brands that are not targeted, and the marketing results are not good.

For example, in Adidas's earnings report, it was mentioned clearly that Reebok brand was excellent in sports and leisure products, but its fitness category did not rise or fall, even offset the double-digit growth of the classic series.

In addition to Reebok, Arthur, who hastily decided to become an independent brand and set up a store in 2018, had to readjust his brand strategy.

After the three quarter of 2018, the Arthur group lowered its annual forecast. Although the ghost tiger tiger has been strong for many years and has no signs of ineffective follow-up, the momentum of Arthur's sports line has slowed down, and the ghost tigers are totally unable to stand alone in the market. All this has affected Arthur's overall performance.

A person who asked not to be named in the sports equipment area of tiger Sports Forum told the China Commercial Daily reporter that in today's big environment, if you want to sell products, you need a series of cooperation from marketing to channels.

2018 is a year of testing the basic skills of sports brands. Once a few hot marketing modes have gradually lost their new meaning. If there is no innovation in products and marketing, it is difficult for consumers to repeat the desire to buy before, and new technologies need time to breed and debug to realize mass production, and the pressure of future sports brands will increase.

Source: China business network: Xie Yu Xing