Guest post from Alex Geertz, who is attending the Fifth China Branding Roundtable in Beijing on September 18 and 19.
A common theme throughout today’s branding conference was sports marketing in China’s changing environment, driven, of course, by the recent Olympic Games in Beijing. Olympic sponsors, including Adidas, Samsung, and UPS shared what drove their campaigns and why these brands chose certain branding and marketing strategies.
Adidas, for instance, tapped into the emotional side of consumers with the localization of its Impossible is Nothing campaign by inspiring people to rally behind Chinese athletes.
In a later session, David Shoemaker, Head of Asia-Pacific and COO of Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, who was joined by tennis star Li Na, also emphasized the value that can be gained by choosing local sports stars over international sports stars. Matches featuring Li Na were the most watched tennis matches of the Olympics in China.
According to Paul Pi, VP of Marketing for Adidas Greater China, the Internet is an integral promotion channel for fans to experience the Adidas brand with over 12 million visitors to the site. With news articles, consumer reports and comments, sms updates and the live streaming of the Olympic Games on CCTV online, the Internet did indeed serve as main channel to consume the Olympics. According to the Data Center of the Chinese Internet (DCCI) reports, an average of 80 million Chinese Internet users tracked the Olympics online daily. We have previously seen how Chinese Internet users are familiar with experiencing major sporting events online by engaging in live “group watch/reporting” on BBS—online bulletin boards (see here for more examples).
While many official research reports on campaign effectiveness for Olympic sponsorship campaigns are only just coming out, brands, such as Adidas, were still able to offer some insight into how they track their brands’ performance. For example, Adidas is working with R3 on a report to measure Olympic campaign ROI through interviews with over 1,500 consumers aged 15-39 across ten cities in China.
In a panel discussing “Below-the-line marketing in China,” Gyehyun Kwon, the head of worldwide sports marketing for Samsung Electronics, mentioned the need to understand the local market and how the Chinese perceive the Olympic Games especially in relation to brands as media is becoming more and more fragmented. CIC recently explored this issue by looking at how brands and different topics surrounding brands are linked to their Olympic campaigns (see a sample analysis here).
Overall, the message was clear that brands need to adapt in order to keep up with China’s rapidly changing market and the most effective way to do this is by exploring innovative channels, including the Internet, for engaging China’s complex and unique consumers.
