In the early morning of July 11, 2016, the much-anticipated European Cup came to an end, with Portugal beating France by 10, bursting into the cold to become the champion of the 2016 European Cup. Inside and outside the game, in the soccer marketing boom of the Euro, many companies also take advantage of the situation to become a winner. How do these companies take advantage of soccer marketing, in the global brand, and how to avoid the "hot and cold" situation?
Football marketing is heating up fast
Domestic color TV giant Hisense, which became the first Chinese company to become a top sponsor of the UEFA Europa League in decades, is one of the typical cases in which Chinese companies' soccer marketing is heating up.
Although Hisense has been reluctant to publicize the specific price of sponsorship of the 2016 Euro, but the end of the Euro group stage, Hisense has announced in a high-profile announcement, alone on the CCTV broadcast of the Euro group stage Hisense in the LED screen around the field of the brand out, discounted into the value of the CCTV advertisement has more than 300 million yuan, only in the domestic has been recovered in advance of the sponsorship of the cost of the European Cup. The industry speculates that Hisense has become the top sponsor of Euro 2016 at a cost of about 50 million euros.
Zhu Shuqin, brand director of Hisense, told the reporter of the First Financial Daily that Hisense's sponsorship of the European Cup is to become the top official sponsor of all UEFA's events from 2016 to 2018, including Euro 2016 in France, the 2017 World Cup European qualifiers, the European qualifiers for the 2018 Olympic Games, as well as the Women's European Cup and other events.
As an interest, Hisense, in addition to having rolling advertisements broadcast on the LED screens around the match venues, has Hisense logos on the ticket faces of the Euro soccer matches, the official backdrops including the big screens in the fan plazas of the nine cities in France hosting this year's Euro, and Hisense's 4K televisions and 4G cell phones are all serving this year's matches as well.
In China, Hisense also organized the "Hisense Football Baby" event, which was broadcast live on Douyu. Zhu Shuqin said soccer babes are standard for soccer's international tournaments, and other sponsors such as Carlsberg have also organized teams of babes. "The purpose of this activity is to amplify the IP of the top sponsors and influence the post-90s crowd. In China, Hisense's popularity is 80%, the remaining 20% of the unrecognized crowd is mainly the post-90s and post-00s, and this joint Tencent to carry out the 'soccer baby' campaign is mainly to cover the young people."
Zhu Shuqin believes that the sponsorship of the European Cup has become the most successful "brand battle" in the 47 years since the founding of Hisense, from the point of view of inputs and outputs, "super value". She revealed that Hisense will not rule out the sponsorship of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, renewing the love affair with soccer marketing.
Not only Hisense, in recent years the domestic "play" soccer marketing enterprises more and more, has become a wave of fever. Last November, Skyworth announced that it had become the official sponsor of the 2015-2019 China Football Association's China Team. This year, Chinese Culture joined hands with CITIC Capital to take a 13% stake in City Football Group, the parent company of Manchester City FC. Then, Suning's 70% holding of Italian Inter Milan Football Club for 210 million yuan was even more sensational. More recently, Lehman, which started out as an LED lighting company, wholly acquired the Newcastle Jets soccer club in Australia.
There are also invited teams, stars endorsement. Sanxiong Aurora, micro whale have become the official sponsor of the British Manchester City soccer team in China; Huawei cell phone to ask the world's soccer Mr. Lionel Messi endorsement, ZTE's Nubia cell phone to ask another soccer superstar C Luo endorsement, OPPO and Barcelona team cooperation to launch customized version of the phone. Arguably, hotter than the Euros, Chinese companies are passionate about soccer marketing.
Brand internationalization and rejuvenation
Many years ago, Oxy air conditioning asked Chinese soccer team manager Milo to be the spokesman, and in one fell swoop became the dark horse of the air conditioning industry. Compared with the past, this new round of domestic soccer marketing boom, more international, in line with the brand internationalization, the demand for youth.
Liu Hongxin, president of Hisense Group, said in an interview with the First Financial Daily in April this year, striving to achieve within three years, the revenue "big head" in the overseas target. In fact, in 2015, Hisense Group's operating income of about 100 billion yuan, overseas income of about 3.2 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for nearly one-fifth of Hisense's overall income, which is away from the overseas income accounted for "half of the river mountain" goal there is still a gap.
So, this year, Hisense continue to make efforts in the overseas market, sponsorship of the European Cup has become a booster. July 7, Liu Hongxin once again accepted the newspaper interview, said Hisense sponsorship of the European Cup, the effect is very good. Not only to the European market, to the North and South American market, Africa and other emerging markets, and even to the Chinese domestic market also has a very good impact.
"Sponsoring the European Cup is really in line with our global strategy." Liu Hongxin said, on the one hand, to enter the developed markets in Europe and the United States, is Hisense's top priority, on the other hand, is to consolidate South Africa, Australia, the Middle East and other Hisense's traditional strengths of the market. And this time, due to the abandonment of Japan's Canon, Sharp, Hisense, Turkish Airlines to seize the opportunity to squeeze into the top sponsors of the European Cup, and Coca-Cola, Hyundai, Carlsberg and other multinational giants together on the field of the European Cup, undoubtedly lifting their own image in the world.
Suning Group Chairman Zhang Near East also bluntly said that the layout of the soccer industry less than a year Suning, a one-off holding of the century-old Inter Milan, is out of three aspects of strategic considerations. First, the merger and acquisition of Inter Milan is part of Suning's strategy of laying out the sports industry and leading healthy consumption. Sports will become the largest industry of health consumption in China. The world's largest sports program soccer, and the future of the world's largest soccer market in China, this is the inevitable trend of the development of the global soccer industry.
Zhang said, secondly, it will comprehensively improve the technical system and operational capacity of Suning Football Club. In addition, it is also an important part of Suning's internationalization development. "At the beginning of this year, the Suning International Headquarters was established to launch a new round of internationalization, and is now entering the Southeast Asian and European markets." Around the world, the spirit of sports is one and the same, and the love of soccer knows no boundaries. The spirit of sports struggle and the delivery of the art of soccer competition is Suning's business card to the world.
Zhang Yutao, chairman and general manager of Samsung Aurora, also told reporters that Samsung hopes to enhance its brand and accelerate the expansion of overseas markets by taking the opportunity to become the official lighting partner of Manchester City Football Club in China.
"Sports marketing is a quick way to boost corporate brand awareness, like Evergrande's rise from a regional real estate company to a nationally recognized company through soccer marketing." Liu Tangzhi, vice president of Skyworth Group and president of its color TV business unit, said Skyworth's joining hands with the Chinese Football Association as an official sponsor for four years is part of Skyworth's efforts to carry out high-end branding. "Skyworth's main business is TV, and the relevance of soccer and TV is the highest, so we can foresee that this sports marketing will bring more exposure." And the micro whale TV teamed up with the Manchester City team, is also hoping to establish its new Internet TV is "watching football magic weapon" image.
How to avoid "hot and cold"?
In the view of Duan Chuanmin, executive chairman of the Marketing Innovation Alliance, China's soccer market is heating up, borrowing well-known soccer events, teams, players to market, can play "eye-catching", "attracting traffic" effect. Therefore, behind this wave of soccer marketing boom, first of all, the traffic, the competition for users, this competition from online, offline, cell phone, to the crowd focus on the place.
"Secondly, sports culture represents a healthy and active lifestyle, which is attractive to the 70, 80, 90s, so soccer marketing can attract the younger generation, which is conducive to the brand rejuvenation, and to establish the image of aggressiveness and hard work." Duan Chuanmin said.
Duan Chuanmin believes that Hisense's internationalization has not been fully developed, the sponsorship of the European Cup, more is to play a role in the domestic market effect, input-output ratio needs to be further observed. If only soccer marketing, no related products, market development measures to match, will be a waste of resources. So after sponsorship, business, products must follow.
Football marketing has a variety of forms, how to choose? Duan Chuanmin believes that holding the team is an investment behavior, specifically to consider the synergy between marketing resources and their own business. And the sponsorship of international tournaments, the increase in the number of cases of celebrities as endorsements, indicating that Chinese companies have become global gold masters, more and more in the international arena, high-priced access to the world's resources. "If the market is limited to the Chinese market and emerging country markets, such investment is still too expensive, and there may be a problem of unrefined marketing."
Thus, Duan Chuanmin warned that Chinese companies should be careful in choosing international resources and should not spend money overseas. Many companies spend a lot of money abroad, but do not invest enough resources in domestic media and creative companies. In addition, "how to create high-value brands is an urgent need for Chinese companies, otherwise they can only sell low-priced products. Therefore, in addition to using soccer marketing to make a brand name, channel deep plowing, technological changes, innovative products and so on must match. If it does not match, it is easy to go cold after the boom."