There're only less than 400 days left for the Beijing Olympics. In a modern sense, the largest sports festival is not only a sporting contest among nations and regions but also a competition of brands and their marketing campaigns.
Adidas has been working with the Olympic movement for 80 years and the rise of Samsung after the Seoul Games exemplifies a perfect combination of sports and modern commerce.
With the first batch of 48 sponsors selected, the brands covering 10 big categories and 4,000 products begin to emerge. Many companies won tickets to the Olympic commercial contest and use intellectual property tools to exclude other competitors out of the Games. Chinese clothes brands mostly have limited resources, so can and should they just remain in the audience, watching this gala as hosts?
Our answer is no. But what can non-sponsor brands do?
Closely watch the market opportunities: The Olympics is one of the best commercial platforms because it requires the highest skills of marketing and public relations. Just imagine, in 17 days, over 1 billion eyes watch the games in various formats. All brands have an opportunity to create a blue ocean in Olympic marketing through innovative, intensive, ambush, or invisible marketing.
Have a sober understanding of yourself: The Olympic market is not fit for all. It can have high yields, but it also means high investment and high risks. If you are doing it, you must have a thorough return-on-investment analysis and monitoring tools in place.
Formulate your brand development model: Do you launch a lot of event marketing through the press or corporate social responsibility events or take a more customer-targeted marketing approach? How are you going to achieve a balance?
Find a right contact point: The modern Olympics is not just about sports, because human values, aesthetics, competition between nations and regions, national pride, personal fervor about sports, entertainment, fashion, experience, and many other elements are entwined with Olympics. Any of these elements can be a point to establish contact with your targets.
We think there are seven strategies that clothes brands can use to establish their profile during the games.
1. Sponsor a team: Nike is not an official sponsor, but it's said the sportswear maker signed up 21 teams of the Chinese delegation and the stars include Yao Ming in the basketball team and Zheng Jie and Yan Zi in the women tennis team.
2. Sign up promising athletes: There are many potential Olympic champions. If you find the right athletes, the returns can be huge.
3. Join hands with top media organizations: No 1 Chinese sportswear maker Lining is not an official sponsor too. But it has signed up national TV broadcaster CCTV from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2008 and all anchors will wear Lining clothes.
4. Create a media event: Hengyuanxiang is a master in this. What should the Chinese delegation wear at the opening? Hengyuanxiang launched a dress design contest globally. A simple commercial plan like this can become a news event and attract a lot of eyeballs.
5. Create China elements: Lining has released sports shoes in the shape of a Chinese bow and Nike used the China Red color in its products, while sports shoemaker Voit designed the China Impression series. All these products use China concepts like color, calligraphy, painting, and legends. As China becomes the focus of the world during the Games, China concepts are likely to become popular too.
6. Add some entertainment factors: During the Athens Games in 2004, Netease.com built a Sports Dream World theme park covering over 10,000 square meters and won applauses from many Chinese.
7.Have some interaction with society: Olympic Games can be seen as a relation marketing platform, with so many relations among governments, enterprises, the media, social communities, consumers, and manufacturers. These groups can be all used as a platform to demonstrate products of clothes manufacturers. Even if athletes do not wear your suits, ordinary people may do so.
By Ma Ruiguang and Jia Bingwei
The authors are consultants at Flyhorse Consulting Co Ltd, a domestic marketing consulting company.
(China Daily August 2, 2007)
