The Olympics are over, and we have summarized a methodology for event marketing!

The Paris Olympics is not only a sports event, but also a battlefield for brand marketing. Chinese brands have demonstrated a variety of marketing strategies in this event. Through in-depth analysis, this article proposes a set of "1231" marketing methodology, providing new perspectives and strategies for brand marketing.

The Paris Olympics came to an end.

The public attention was higher than expected, the Chinese team was more amazing than expected, and there was a little more relaxation than expected. Behind the super exciting gold medal moment, there were also invisible brand battles. It is time to "settle accounts" in autumn, and if you want to play well, it has to be Chinese brands.

• The most unexpected benefit: A Spanish reporter said, "This is the strongest backpack in history," which made Xiangxing Luggage, the manufacturer of the Beijing Olympic media backpack, unexpectedly popular again. The same model was searched on major e-commerce platforms, directly driving sales growth;
• Highest cost-effectiveness - ANTA sponsored the shoes and clothing for the Chinese Olympic delegation to receive awards. Every time the Chinese team stood on the podium, the ANTA logo was exposed;
• The best at leveraging momentum - Bawang Tea opened a pop-up store in Paris, worked with seven champion health ambassadors (including Liu Xiang), shot seven short films, and re-told the stories of athletes;

…

We want to go a step further and see the essence through the phenomenon. We try to summarize a set of "1231" marketing methodology for various major events, hoping that it will be of some reference value.

1. A brand origin

The commercial penetration of a super event like the Olympics is unimaginable to ordinary people. The parts that a person can hear and see are only a minority. It can be said that all walks of life can have a relationship with it.

According to the official website of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the sponsorship income of this Olympics is 1.226 billion euros. There are four major categories: global partners (15), senior partners (7), official partners (13), and official sponsors (44), with a total of 79 companies becoming official sponsors.

More subdivided forms of cooperation are in the national team.

• Hebei Yinglio, Zhangkong Barbell, Shuangyu, DHS and other companies are equipment suppliers for table tennis, three-on-three basketball and other events;
• The opening ceremony dress of the Chinese delegation came from Jomoo King, B&L sponsored the national golf team, and footwear companies such as Li Ning and Anta sponsored uniforms, sportswear, and sports shoes for the Chinese or other teams. Peak also sponsored uniforms for 11 national teams this year.
• Alibaba's cloud technology allows Olympic broadcast signals to move from satellites to the cloud;
• The sponsors of the national breakdancing and skateboarding teams are Xtep and FILA FUSION (a sub-brand of FILA), respectively, while the clothing of the national rock climbing team is provided by the outdoor brand Kalenji.
• The synchronized swimming team used products from Hangzhou Mao Geping for their beauty products;
• China's three male marathon runners He Jie, Yang Shaohui, Wu Xiangdong, and female runner Bai Li will wear Xtep running shoes, while another female runner Xia Yuyu will wear Li Ning's Feidian 4 ultra;
• As early as mid-June, Panpan Foods shipped about 100,000 products in batches by air to Paris, providing them to the training camp, support camp and China House of the Chinese delegation;
• Sanyuan Foods has reached a cooperation with the Chinese National Weightlifting Team, further strengthening its brand positioning as a symbol of China's strength and delivering positive energy and fresh nutrition;
• …

I have listed so many, but I wonder if you understand them all. From the national team to various sub-projects, from title sponsors to service providers, from endorsements to sponsorships, from teams to individuals, the angles, methods and scales of cooperation are infinitely diverse.

Then there is no optimal solution. It still comes down to whether it meets the demands of the company itself, whether the objects and methods of your cooperation are consistent with your own brand, and whether there is any resonance between the Olympic spirit of "higher, stronger, faster" and the products/services you provide.

The Olympics are "concrete", and their traffic and influence are world-class; the Olympics are also "metaphysics", and not all big investments will result in a splash; the Olympic traffic comes quickly and goes even faster, and the user minds you can retain are your own brand assets.

The origin of this brand determines the investment-output ratio of your money.

2. Two magic weapons for success

After all, the Olympics is an adrenaline "game", and the super-burning personal heroism always inspires the passion in front of the screen.

Betting on the right product is the most profitable strategy and the only tactic that can be elevated to a marketing strategy, especially betting on the dark horse of a popular project, which has a miraculous effect of moving a thousand pounds with a little effort. There is no metaphysics in this, and it essentially tests the ability of contemporary business intelligence.

1. One is to bet on the right thing.

On August 3, Zheng Qinwen won the gold medal in the women's singles final of the Paris Olympics. This is also the first Olympic women's singles gold medal won by a Chinese player.

Before the Paris Olympics, Zheng Qinwen had endorsed at least ten famous brands, including Nike, which was the first to sign the contract, Ant Group, which signed the contract in August 2022, as well as Rolex, Wilson, Swisse, McDonald's, Gatorade, Bawang Cha Ji, Lancome, etc.

At 0:21 in the morning, Zheng Qinwen had just won the championship, and many brands entered the group celebration moment.

Ant Group’s official WeChat public account released a poster with the words “Only by bravely chasing the light can you become the brightest light”; Lancôme took advantage of the popularity and released an advertising picture of Zheng Qinwen holding the “Lancôme Little Black Bottle” on Weibo; Bawang Tea Princess congratulated the “Health Ambassador” on winning the gold medal, and the ad became the opening screen ad on Weibo; Swisse pushed a large number of Zheng Qinwen’s endorsement ads on WeChat Moments; Nike also released a poster with the words “Victory will answer everything” on its official video account.

There is no such thing as an athlete winning the championship by chance; it is the result of deliberate practice day after day; and betting on the right brand is not easy either; it is a scientific decision made after countless intelligence analyses.

In contrast, empathy may be more suitable for most brands, after all, emotions are something everyone can relate to.

But the difficulty of empathy lies in how to materialize emotions into actions, ferment the actions again on social networks, lead the public to the next emotional climax, and finally form a memory anchor point.

2. One is the common feeling.

A sense of relaxation, this is the true meaning of this Olympics.

After winning the championship, Pan Zhanle complained to the "Central Bank", and the subsequent handshakes, cyber violence and other antics made people laugh endlessly. He also kept reciting various golden quotes in interviews, and netizens jokingly called him "the God in charge of interviews."

Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao, who won the first gold medal of this Olympics, are not only called "A Tiao Jie" and "Gan Fan Ge" by their online nicknames, but also showed their relaxed nature in the interview. The former said frankly that "the first gold medal is not a motivation, nor a pressure, it is just a result for me", and the latter said frankly that "the coach is more anxious" when asked if he was anxious. Their emotional stability has earned them the nicknames "the two strongest high school summer workers" by netizens.

In particular, the seamless hairpins worn by shooting champion Huang Yuting during the competition sold nearly 600,000 units on an e-commerce platform.

The 17-year-old Quan Hongchan, wearing the most down-to-earth slippers and doing the most hardcore water jumping, not only won two gold medals, but also made the ugly fish slippers a hot item on Taobao with her strength. The sales of "Quan Hongchan's same slippers" by a certain merchant exceeded 70,000 orders.

Relaxation has become a new direction that many brands are targeting in marketing. For example, Anta launched its own Olympic cultural IP "Anta Linglong", and Lei Jun's "relaxation promotion" in Paris has achieved brand and effect integration.

To summarize again, empathy is not the goal, but a means. Only when empathy can stimulate consumption can one be a true master. This requires efforts from both the brand and the business ends to transform air force potential energy into ground results.

3. Three major implementation principles

• Extreme response speed
• Two-way interactive marketing
• Always choose to believe in the post-00s

Let’s analyze the three together.

The Paris Olympics lasted 17 days, producing a total of 329 gold medals. Together with the opening and closing ceremonies and special events during the process, there were high-speed dynamic changes in more than half a month, and the gold propagation cycle of each wave was only 2 to 12 hours.

This poses a high challenge to marketing actions. On the one hand, it is necessary to respond promptly and make quick decisions based on the environment, and on the other hand, it is necessary to plan ahead and prepare for the future.

Current information acquisition is extremely fragmented, and consumers' cognitive minds have been opened. Brands must let go of the lofty one-way value output, restrain the desire to talk to themselves, and actively cater to two-way interactive marketing.

Actively carry out secondary creation based on netizens' opinions, and actively carry out secondary dissemination of netizens' secondary creations. In the timing of crowdsourcing creation such as the Olympics, there is only one marketing method, and that is interactive marketing.

If you meet the above two conditions and you still don’t know how to execute it, then always choose to trust young people, especially those born after 2000. This is not a flattering answer, but one with core meaning.

This Olympics has allowed everyone to see the distinct personalities and self-expression of young athletes. They are no longer bound by the 70s, 80s, and 90s generations. They have achieved excellent results while being sincere and natural in front of the camera. Zheng Qinwen, at the age of 21, has become one of the most commercially valuable athletes in China; Pan Zhanle has been praised by many netizens as "cool" and "this is the post-00s generation".

On the other hand, those born after 2000 have also become key nodes in social networks. Their hormones are rising, they pay more attention to the positive side, are more natural at making jokes, and are not stingy with their love for a star or a brand. More importantly, they are also the main consumer force.

Persisting in the game, staying with young people, understanding the post-00s, integrating into the post-00s, and leading the post-00s are the most correct marketing tactics for brands.

4. A main position

Each major platform is not only a platform for information distribution, but also a platform for brand value transformation. Each has its own advantages and style.

Platforms like Tik Tok and Kuaishou invite celebrity athletes to participate in live broadcasts and become important traffic portals; platforms like Xiaohongshu, with its unique user atmosphere, have become the platform that best understands the opening ceremony; and major e-commerce platforms directly carry out transformations around the Olympic theme.

I can understand the impulse of "I want it all", but during major events like the Olympics, it is actually a better decision logic to all-in the potential energy into one company.

Personally, I think the Tencent ecosystem may be the most overlooked but most important marketing position.

Although it entered the game at the last minute, Tencent, as a veteran participating in eight Olympic Games, has accumulated rich operating experience from the PC era to the mobile Internet era. It has formed a "four-in-one" content marketing methodology of professional event broadcasting + high-quality in-depth content + ecological creative communication + industrial resource support.

To watch sports events, people use broadcasting platforms such as Tencent Video and Tencent Sports; to read information, Tencent News covers the middle and high-end user groups; when public opinion ferments, WeChat and QQ are the only two national social platforms; especially with the rise of video accounts, short video slicing + live broadcast + social distribution have formed the most important mental influence.

Looking at the whole picture, it can be called "coordinated operations of a large group."

There is an interesting case, that is Mengniu.

As a national brand, Mengniu continued to use "being strong" as the core element of its brand spirit in the marketing of the Paris Olympics, combining various marketing methods and cross-border resources to continuously accumulate assets at the brand spirit level.

As the rights holder for the Paris Olympic Games, Tencent will help Mengniu win the Olympic marketing battle by leveraging its rich and professional experience in major competition broadcasting and content production and operation, deep cross-border resource accumulation, and professional marketing service capabilities, based on Mengniu's Olympic marketing needs.

1. Mengniu x Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) x Han Hong

As of August 13, this MV has been played over 340 million times online.

As Chinese Olympic athletes set off for Paris, Mengniu teamed up with Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) and invited music giant Han Hong to create an Olympic support song. As the Olympics are about to begin, the song will ignite the inner strength of the public, fully stimulate national pride, and convey the brand vision of "Born to be strong, and to flourish along the way."

2. Mengniu x Tencent x Meituan

Focusing on the hot topic of the first gold medal, Mengniu, Tencent and Meituan have joined forces to launch the marketing campaign of "Cheers to China, Mengniu invites you a drink", creating a new paradigm for cross-border marketing cooperation between instant retail and consumer goods.

Mengniu invited champion athlete Fu Yuanhui to visit Meituan's live broadcast room to start an interactive live broadcast where users can draw money. The number of views in Meituan's official live broadcast room reached a peak of 7.78 million on the Meituan side in the past month, a year-on-year increase of 70%. Among them, Telunsu sales ranked No. 1 in the flash sale dairy sub-brand, Telunsu pure milk slim pack sales exceeded 10,000 boxes per day, and Mengniu ice products exceeded 100,000 orders per day.

3. Mengniu and Tencent cooperate on customized documentary

As the competition was fully launched, a large number of social hot spots emerged in various competitions, which also aroused the public's interest in the B-side life of Olympic athletes. Based on this, Mengniu and Tencent jointly launched the documentary "Be Stronger than Gold Medals", which walked into the family life and "Olympic Second Generation" of legendary athletes such as Du Li, Pang Wei, Wang Hao, Wang Jin, Liu Guoliang, Wang Junxia, ​​Zou Shiming, and Marbury, triggering the audience's emotional resonance and interpreting the spirit and heritage of being strong from different perspectives.

4. Mengniu x WeChat Moments Advertisement

During this period, Mengniu also cooperated with the Olympic fireworks opening ceremony to create a special form of WeChat Moments, and the effect was very cool.

It can be said that the end point of all major event marketing is actually in WeChat Moments. Deep emotional resonance, rich advertising forms and gameplay, and strong social interaction make WeChat Moments advertising a standard feature of major event marketing.

In addition to Mengniu, for example, when Zheng Qinwen won the championship, Bawang Tea Princess immediately posted on WeChat Moments; when Pan Zhanle won the championship, Nongfu Spring also used WeChat Moments advertising many times to spread the word.

summary:

Tencent's ecosystem's unique communication touchpoints + years of methodology in event marketing + exclusive customization capabilities are indeed the standard marketing platform for national brands.

5. Thinking

Big event marketing: getting closer to scientific marketing

It seems that there are many coincidences during the Olympics. You cannot predict the gold medal results, you cannot predict which photo will become a hit, you cannot predict a certain warm corner, and you cannot predict which brand will be popular.

But today’s big event marketing is getting closer and closer to scientific marketing. Behind the coincidence is the admiration for the strong, the human nature of fragmented communication, the algorithm-driven distribution logic, a part of historical empiricism, and advance planning for a rainy day.

The core of uncertainty is actually determinism, with random characteristics manifested under determinism.

This "1231" marketing methodology: a brand origin + two winning magic weapons + three tactical principles + a main position, is a summary of past experience.

Maybe it can be reused for other major events.

Chief Writer/ Jia Jia Article Architect/ Tuoba Ye This article is written by the author of Operation Pie [Party A Finance], WeChat public account: [Party A Finance], original/authorized to be published in Operation Pie, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.