The Essential Action Of Sports Brand: Using Entertainment Stars To Do Marketing And Endorsement?

From the cover, the background to the hot headlines, the official micro-blog of Adidas Neo has recently been fully occupied by the thousand seals.

At the end of November, Adidas neo just announced that the boy from the TFBOYS group became the new spokesperson for the Neo series and the first global youth creative officer.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, November 28th is the 17 year old birthday.

Choose to announce the news on the eve of birth day.

Taking advantage of this time node, Adidas attracted a large number of fans traffic, official micro-blog launched more than 500 thousand times on that day, and now the forwarding volume is nearly 6 million. Currently, it is still in the popular headlines of Adidas neo micro-blog.

At the same time, the German brand did not forget to take the opportunity to launch two new endorsements, a price of 499 yuan of the same paragraph.

Quickly sold out.

Adidas has already felt the "small meat" fans' bonus just in the initial stage of cooperation with Yi.

For Adidas neo, which is the trend of young people, sports and appearance are like sports.

This is a good choice.

In fact, in the October China net women's singles final, Yi Wan Xi Xi once wore a brand of sportswear at the ceremony of picking ceremony, giving the signal of signing new endorsements, so that the official announcement was not surprising.

This is obviously not the first taste of Adidas.

Before this, as the star marketing of the Chinese market, Adidas's two major sports life series Adidas originals and Adidas neo have already signed a large number of cross-border stars, not only taking off the luxury star combination of Eason Chan, Fan Bingbing, Angelababy, Eddie Peng and Janine Chang, but also the red meat of Lu Han and Wu Yifan.

Driven by the star effect, in the 2016 fiscal year, Adidas footwear sales surged by 53% over the same period, of which two of the brands originals and Neo had a 45% increase in footwear, especially in the Greater China region. Sales of evergreen models such as Stan Smiths and Superstars remained strong.

In the Chinese market, the main rival of Adidas's small meat snatch is PUMA, which is also a sports brand with entertainment labels and fashion labels as its marketing strategy, and owns two large and small meat of Yang Yang and Liu Haoran.

In addition, Zhang Yixing became the spokesperson for the Converse brand in the Asia Pacific region, New Balance came to Huang Zitao, and Reebok signed Wu Lei and William Chan this year.

In the field of sports brand, a battle for small meat has already started.

The reason for this is attracting traffic and capturing young consumers in the Chinese market. This is the primary factor for many brands to sign small meat across borders.

According to a survey by consulting firm Bain&Company, about 85% of the current retail industry is coming from the millennial generation. China's 00 consumer group is gradually becoming the main force in the market. Unlike before, they are more inclined to innovate and fashion products.

Choosing the most popular traffic celebrity endorsement with young audiences has become the most direct way to increase the flow of dialogue between the major brands and the consumer groups.

Cater for sports fashion product line is another important factor.

Over the past two years, market winds have shifted from functional to fashion oriented, and sportswear and leisure wear have become the most popular products in the global market.

In order to match the propaganda of sports and fashion categories, the use of entertainment stars for marketing and endorsement is almost the necessary action of all major sports brands.

Even the Under Armour, which had previously focused on functional professional equipment, now has to admit that it is not fashionable enough. Though it failed to win the popular little meat in the Chinese market, the brand quickly signed the show star Zhang Lan Xin after the introduction of lifestyle, seeking the fashion selling point.

The most easily overlooked point is that the sports brand grabs the small meat and has the intention of grabbing the female market.

In March this year, the report of FT Confidential Research, a high-end research service in the financial times, showed that the participation of Chinese women in the sports market continued to increase. In 2016, the average expenditure per woman on sports equipment reached 1141 yuan, while that of male consumers was 1081 yuan in the same period. The proportion of women who did not participate in sports at all was 10.4%, a 4.3% decrease from the previous year.

At the same time, women's consumption behavior is more vulnerable to endorsement stars, they will buy sports equipment when "Star".

In the expansion stage, there is still huge commercial space in the domestic female sports consumption market. The wallets that reach women are the long-term strategies of sports brands in the past few years and even in the future.

In fact, almost all sports brands including Nike and Adidas have been exploring the potential of women's sports market.

As early as 2011, Adidas opened the world's first women's concept store, which continued to expand in China.

Since then, German brands have been separating women's products from training categories, employing Lululemon Christine Day, a former chief executive, as a strategic consultant for women's business, and continuing marketing for women's brands.

And the momentum of Nike is also not falling. In the latest five year plan, the US brand indicates that the sales of women's products in fiscal year 2020 will grow from $5 billion 700 million to $11 billion, with a view to occupy 1/5 of the total business, and Nike Training Club will become an important part of the "better" series of activities.

Now, Adidas has signed a contract. This battle for small meat continues to be overweight, because the market situation in the past two years has already had some feedback. Adidas and PUMA, who have been playing the game in the star marketing field, have made significant returns on the financial performance list.

{page_break}

In the first quarter of fiscal year 2017, Adidas's sales increased by 26% over the same period, 24% in the two quarter, and 12% in the third quarter.

Among them, Greater China has been Adidas's fastest growing market in the world, and its sales growth has reached 28% in the three quarter.

The brand said its performance continued to rise, mainly due to the two digit sales growth of Sports Classics and Neo series. Originals also maintained strong momentum, which is the most concentrated product line of sports fashion and star effect.

As a result, Adidas again raised its annual performance expectations.

PUMA is no exception. After years of slump, the sports brand has attracted the attention of millennial consumers. Net profit rose 68% in 2016, and annual sales increased by 7.1% to 3 billion 627 million euros.

From 2015 to 2016, Lu Han was sold as a PUMA spokesperson during the sale of his products.

After the two quarter earnings report this year, PUMA CEO Bjorn Gulden said it would increase the marketing expenses of sports products in the future, and the sports brand should continue to seek benefits from celebrity endorsements.

What is interesting is that when a lot of brands actively test the water Star Marketing, as the largest sports giant in the world, Nike has always been absent from the competition for star meat, and has not signed a big name in the entertainment circle in the form of endorsement.

In fact, Nike has long adhered to the original principles and principles of cooperation with athletes.

In addition to sports stars, American brands tend to highlight ordinary life and Sport stories about ordinary people in advertising.

However, Nike's attitude has been shaken by the fact that competitors have become a "tide card" with small meat marketing and the gradual aging of their core consumer groups. In the past half a year, they have been hovering around the edge of star marketing.

Most notable is that in March this year, Air Max Day anniversary, Nike invited Wang Junkai to visit its global headquarters, the latter was invited to participate in product design activities.

The response was warm enough. A Wang Junkai related micro-blog was forwarded wildly, and Nike's official micro-blog never seemed so lively.

In addition, Nike has filmed a promotional video for Li Yuchun and invited him to be a press star.

At the end of November, Air Force 1 launched the 35th anniversary celebration, and Edison Chan, who had not appeared for a long time, appeared.

Although Nike broke through the "principles" to choose entertainment stars to take advantage of marketing, the US brand has not officially announced the signing of these stars as spokesmen, and the way of cooperation between the two sides is still slightly ambiguous.

With some brand supporters and insiders criticised, Nike's use of entertainment stars has undermined the original attitude and "pure land" as an international brand. This kind of public opinion has made Nike's situation somewhat difficult.

Another objective factor is that the sports giant adopts the global strategy in Star Marketing, so that it is difficult to have an extremely localized star endorsement in the Chinese market.

It is worth noting that in addition to the overall performance of the Greater China region, FT Confidential Research's report also showed that Adidas has been catching up with Nike in the crucial Chinese women market. In 2016, 22.2% of the female consumers most often purchased Adidas, which was 18.4% in 2015, while the most frequently purchased Nike consumer fell from 21% to 20.3%.

In the market of sports and fashion, the effect of a small meat star is obvious for Adidas.

The first quarter of fiscal year 2018 showed that sales in Nike Greater China increased 9% to 1 billion 108 million dollars in the three months ended August 31st.

Although US brands remain on the rise in the market, the growth rate has been significantly reduced.

In the case of overall performance is not optimistic, if Nike has a better way to attract young people and women's attention, not to make compromises on Star strategy is naturally the best choice.

Just what people see is that this giant brand is wandering.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.