Chinese Sports Brand Roundabout Route To Share Olympic Business Opportunities

Chinese sports brands that failed to qualify for Olympic sponsorship share the feast of the Beijing Olympic Games on the circuitous route.

Many of the audience who watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games had a fresh memory of the Swedish delegation: the female sportsmen had a bright blue cheongsam, white trousers, and a small folding fan with a Swedish flag in their hands.

The dress was carefully designed by Li Ning Co, a sponsor of the Swedish delegation.

Li Ning Co, which has been sponsoring the Chinese Olympic delegation to win costumes since 1992, was defeated by Adidas in the final bidding phase, and missed the sponsor of Beijing Olympic Games.

But Lining's brand is not lonely on the Olympic stage. In Sweden, Spain, Sultan and Argentina, Lining's clear brand mark can be seen.

This is not just the Lining family. PEAK, Hongxing Erke, Anta, Lu You and XTEP are sponsoring the delegations of Iraq, North Korea, Tajikistan, Lithuania and Belarus respectively.

The strategy of "long planned"

Adidas, Nike and Lining are the three providers of Chinese sportswear, Adidas takes the award dress of the Chinese team, Nike provides sportswear for 22 Chinese teams, and Lining only sponsors sports clothes for diving team, gymnastics, table tennis and shooting 4 dream teams.

At the last Athens Olympic Games, Lining won the Argentina basketball team and won the best of it.

So in September 2006, Lining signed a contract to sponsor the Sultan athletics team.

When the Olympic sponsorship was launched last January, Lining's pace of sponsoring foreign delegations increased significantly.

In January, March and June this year, Lining established a cooperative relationship with the Argentina Basketball Association and the Olympic Committee of Sweden and Spain.

It is Hongxing Erke after Lining's sensitivity and acuity.

"We signed a contract with the North Korean Olympic Organizing Committee in November 2006, and it is undoubtedly a pride for the national brand to stand on the Olympic podium."

Tan Qibing, the brand manager of Hongxing Erke, said that he had initially considered sponsoring other countries, but ultimately only reached cooperation with DPRK.

Tan Qibing believes that Korean athletes will receive high attention from the Chinese people.

On the company's website, North Korea has strong strength in many aspects such as women's football, weightlifting, judo, boxing, table tennis and so on. This also means that Hongxing Erke's chance to get on the podium will not be small.

As of press release, North Korea has won 7 gold medals in the Olympic Games, including four gold, two silver and two bronze medals.

Iraq is meat and potatoes.

At the end of last month, Iraq was kicked out of the Olympic Games and was allowed to compete in the world, and the sponsor of the Iraqi delegation, PEAK, was also caught by a lot of media interviews.

"The Iraqi national team still takes part in the Olympic Games in such a harsh and difficult environment of the domestic environment. It is pursuing the victory with the Olympic spirit, which is exactly the same as the spirit of PEAK's" Icanplay ".

This is the fundamental reason why we support Iraq's participation in the Beijing Olympic Games.

Last August 10th, PEAK announced that it would provide full sponsorship for Iraq's preparation for the Beijing Olympics. Xu Zhihua, deputy general manager of PEAK group, said at the press conference.

In Iraq, sport is almost the only activity that can bring joy to all people. It is the only way for Iraqis to communicate with the outside world. Therefore, there are a lot of enterprises wishing to sponsor the Iraqi delegation.

According to the Wall Street journal in December last year, Lining had tried to sponsor the Iraq football team that won the Asian Cup, but failed.

Prior to PEAK, LG Korea has been a sponsor of the Iraqi football team.

But in the end, the Iraqi football team failed to appear at the Olympics.

Lining also sponsors Sultan athletes for the same reason, and Sultan women sprinter Naval El Jack is also a sports star. She once won the women's 400 meter bronze medal at the 2006 World Youth Track and Field Championships.

"Edge marketing" is very cost-effective.

In fact, the marketing effect of non Olympic sponsors is not necessarily bad.

Recently, a survey by CCTV market research company CTR showed that 37.4% of the sports brands considered Lining to be a sponsor of Beijing Olympic Games and 22.8% of them chose Adidas.

As the famous advertiser Ye Maozhong said, many consumers do not know who has sponsored the Olympic Games, and only feel who has sponsored the Olympic Games.

"At the final stage of bidding for Olympic sponsors, Lining, who offered 1 billion yuan, was defeated by Adidas, who offered 1 billion 300 million of the price."

China International Brand Alliance chief brand official Liang China said.

After losing the bid, Li Ning Co CEO Zhang Zhiyong once said, "spending more money than Adidas and Nike?

That's impossible. "

To understand this sentence, we only need to compare two sales: Lining sold 4 billion 349 million yuan last year, while Adidas sold 2 billion 520 million euros in the 2 quarter of this year (about 27 billion 220 million yuan).

But Lining's roundabout marketing tactics were good.

At the end of 2006, Lining reached an agreement with the CCTV Olympic Channel, from 2007 to new year's end, to provide Lining's costumes, shoes and accessories for the hosts and reporters of all the columns and events.

However, since June this year, Lining's clothing has not appeared with the Olympic logo because of the Olympic sponsorship.

And other brands of Olympic marketing are also multifarious: Hongxing Erke sponsored the movie "one man's Olympic" costumes, and after repeated studies, betting on the Chinese women's 48 kilogram class as China's first gold project. After Chen Xiexia picked China's first gold, the company immediately announced the opening of its brand spokesperson; while Anta's advertising song, Wang Feng's lyrics and singing, "I love you China" quickly went with the Anta brand, and XTEP bought the naming right of the Beijing Shanghai Olympic Games.