Sports Brand Game: Olympic War Without Gunpowder

At the Olympic Games, the Chinese delegation, apart from the four sports teams of table tennis, diving, gymnastics and shooting, was dressed in the Lining brand, and the other costumes including the award dress and regimental clothes were all Adidas. An interesting phenomenon was that in the Lining brand sponsorship team, most players would wrap themselves up with Adidas's award dress after the end of the competition. This is obviously respect for the Adidas official partner of the Beijing Olympic Games, but on the other hand, it also saw the intensity of the sports brand's competition in the Olympic Games.

From another angle, the Olympic Games is also a big stage for famous brand enterprises to compete. It can even be said that the most competitive part of the Olympic Games is the market.

"Lining" is soaring with Lining.

Lining ran around the bird nest for more than 3 minutes in front of the global audience, and finally ignited the Olympic torch, which undoubtedly pushed the spread of Lining brand in the Olympic Games to the peak.

As the main torch bearer of the 2008 Olympic Games, Lining also promoted the sales of Lining sporting goods sharply.

Some even believe that the Lining brand will become the biggest winner in this Olympic Games.

"Lining's sales in chuchuan will reach 600 million yuan this year, which will increase by 40% last year compared with the same period last year, while sales in the whole country will rise by 60% over the same period last year, and Lining's contribution as a torch bearer to sales promotion is all important."

He Mingming, general manager of Sichuan Jin Lang sporting goods company, said in an interview with reporters recently.

He Mingming said, at present, in the domestic sales market, Nike and Adidas have annual sales of about 9 billion yuan, while the Lining brand is about 6 billion yuan.

In the domestic sports brand, Lining has been firmly in the top position.

The Lining brand marketing has already infiltrated into many Olympic legions.

For example, Chinese table tennis, diving, gymnastics, shooting four national team matches, Argentina basketball team, Spain Olympic team and Sweden Olympic team's match equipment and official equipment.

ADI Nike each has a brilliant idea.

As the two giants of sports brand, ADI and Nike are not going the same way.

The former is the "Olympic official partner" sign, which takes the way of the stars.

But for now, each has its own disadvantages.

Before the Olympic Games, Bai Wen Kang, managing director of Adidas Greater China, said: "we will reach 5000 stores in 2008, covering the domestic market from the first line to the six line, and Adidas will become the top brand in the Chinese market."

To this end, with the help of the official partner of the Beijing Olympic Games, Adidas made a series of brand strategy activities from the pre Olympic Games to the opening of the Olympic Games, and emphasized its specificity in the Beijing Olympic Games.

As ADI's biggest competitor, Nike certainly did not show weakness and joined the competition with the "star strategy".

The brand sponsors tennis superstar Federer, the US men's basketball team "dream eight", and even the German men's basketball team.

For the Chinese delegation, Nike provides competition suits (shoes) for Liu Xiang, Zheng Jie, Yan Zi, Li Na and China basketball team.

Besides, there are also domestic brands such as Hongxing Erke in the Olympic brand competition.

At this Olympic Games, Hongxing Erke became the clothing sponsor of the North Korean team. Besides, the Chinese women's 48 kilogram class weight lifting gold medal athlete Chen Xiexia was also robbed by Hongxing Erke after the Olympic Games, and made the product image spokesperson.

Who can laugh till the end of brand war?

There is no doubt that sponsorship of such top-level events such as the Olympic Games can greatly enhance brand reputation, and brand reputation is just a tool to test the marketing effect of enterprises.

Research shows that every one percentage point increase in brand reputation will boost sales by about 0.32%.

Usually, under the same investment, the effect of Olympic marketing is more than 2~4 times that of conventional marketing. This is also the reason why many enterprises compete for the qualification of Olympic sponsors.

However, in this contest, the enterprises holding the Olympic Games are happy and worried.

Adidas is a partner of the Beijing Olympic Games, and the cost is 1 billion 300 million yuan.

But a recent survey shows that 45% of Chinese consumers mistook Lining for Olympic sponsorship.

"Many consumers do not know who has sponsored the Olympics, but who is feeling the sponsorship of the Olympic Games", said Ye Maozhong, a senior marketing planner and brand management expert.

Nike also has its own "pain".

Among the stars it sponsored, except for the "dream eight", which remained on the Olympic Games, others had already left and did not achieve good results.

The result of the star's retirement is that the loss of the Nike family is still not well estimated, but the blow to its market strategy is huge.

The "2008 Olympic marketing report" released by the Chinese brand research institute points out that among the 62 sponsors of the Beijing Olympic Games, 90% of the enterprises have not yet succeeded in Olympic marketing, and their huge investment may not get enough returns.

The report points out that only 10% of enterprises have achieved better marketing results, and the Olympic marketing effect of 11 enterprises is only equivalent to the conventional effect.

The effectiveness of the remaining 30 enterprises is far less than conventional marketing, as many as 25 enterprises have increased their brand reputation below 5%.