Whether you have money or not, you can do Olympic marketing well

From Heytea's Paris pop-up store to Nike's catchphrase marketing, from the collaboration between Starbucks and Yonex to Xiaohongshu's integration into community life, each case is a vivid portrayal of how brands cleverly combine with the spirit of sports to showcase their charm on the big stage of the Olympics.

The Olympics has become a marketing arena for brands.

On the field, athletes sweated profusely, and outside the field, brands showed their talents. As the first Olympic Games after the epidemic, the Paris Olympics not only brought more than 15 million tourists to Paris, but also attracted the attention of major brands.

On August 5, "Le Le Family" became a hot topic because the Olympic men's 100-meter freestyle champion Pan Zhanle and Sun Yang looked very similar, which led netizens to extend the term "Le Le Family".

Lelecha saw the opportunity and immediately sent a Weibo post in the afternoon to congratulate the Chinese Olympic athletes for winning medals, and also distributed 1,000 milk tea coupons. Although Lelecha did not directly participate in the marketing of the Paris Olympics, it was also very responsive and caught this wave of popularity.

However, Lelecha is not the only brand that caught the wave of popularity of the Olympics. Among the many Olympic marketing cases, the Knife Skills Research Institute has selected the following 7 brand cases: they have won attention in terms of traffic, or achieved good results in sales, and there are also brands that have strengthened their brand concepts and gained a good reputation by leveraging the spirit of sports.

Let’s take a look at how they do it.

1. HEYTEA Paris pop-up store

The wind of the Olympics has blown to the banks of the Seine. There is coffee on the left bank and "HEYTEA" on the right bank.

According to previous Daofa News reports, on July 5, HEYTEA's pop-up store "HEYTEA Paris Games Tea Room" officially opened in Paris, France. It is located at 10 RUE BRéGUET, 11th district, Paris, on the right bank of the Seine. HEYTEA also became the first new tea brand to enter France, and took the lead in firing the first shot in the new tea brand's Olympic marketing.

As the first step for HEYTEA to expand overseas in France, the store is the carrier of brand culture communication and consumer interaction, and is the terminal most likely to generate brand potential in one fell swoop.

This time, HEYTEA not only promoted four classic products, including Succulent Grape, Mango Nectar, Roasted Brown Sugar Milk, and Cheese Green Tea, but also combined Chinese aesthetics with sports event elements, launching sports badges, tea bowls and other peripherals, providing a modern Chinese tea culture experience for local residents in Paris and global tourists, and creating a viewing atmosphere full of joy and oriental aesthetics in the store.

In terms of business data, the sales amount of the pop-up store exceeded 10,000 euros on the first day of opening, and the two sports badge peripherals were sold out. In terms of social communication, the opening formed a long-tail effect of KOL check-ins + ordinary people's comments. Chinese athletes such as Zhao Lina, Bao Chunlai, Wei Qiuyue, and Liu Xiang also checked in at the store, and some users spontaneously bought HEYTEA sports badge peripherals and gave them to Sun Yingsha, a member of the Chinese table tennis team.

In addition to the brand's overseas expansion and the Olympic marketing effect, Heytea also launched joint activities around the Olympic theme in China.

On July 26, "Heytea" officially announced the "Joyful Championship" theme collaboration with "Anta Champion", launched a new joint fruit and vegetable tea drink "Champion Slimming Bottle", and released a new Anta Champion joint version of A Xi image. More than 4,000 stores across the country have created a "Joyful Championship" theme experience. According to Heytea data, the "Champion Slimming Bottle" has sold more than 1.6 million cups in total, and continues to rank in the top 3 of Heytea product sales.

Whether it is overseas or domestic, Heytea mainly spent its budget on stores and products for the Olympic marketing this time, with the purpose of consolidating brand awareness, which is a long-term thinking. In particular, this joint venture objectively formed a distant echo of the domestic + foreign Olympic marketing strategy, and also emphasized the theme of "light burden, real health" proposed by Heytea this year.

2. Overlord Tea Princess Bet on Zheng Qinwen

Another brand that opened a store in Paris is Ba Wang Cha Ji. However, compared to opening a store, what made Ba Wang Cha Ji more popular was that she bet on Zheng Qinwen.

In April this year, Zheng Qinwen became the first "health ambassador" of Bawang Cha Ji. At that time, Zheng Qinwen was not a popular tennis player and was not well known to the public. Compared with most brands that rush to attract traffic stars, Bawang Cha Ji's choice is not mainstream, but it is also reasonable.

The reason is that as a sport with wide market acceptance, the commercial value of tennis is incomparable to other sports. Tennis players can participate in professional competitions almost non-stop throughout the year, which not only allows them to receive bonuses, but also brings high media exposure to their associated brands.

Taking Forbes’ 2023 list of the highest-paid female athletes as an example, nine of the top ten female athletes are tennis players.

As a new tea brand, Bawang Chaji has always used "health" as its main promotional point. Zheng Qinwen, as a young and energetic tennis player, has a healthy and professional image that matches it perfectly.

In addition to betting on the right horse, Bawang Cha Ji’s timely hot marketing is also worth mentioning.

On August 1, local time in Paris, Zheng Qinwen defeated Swiatek 2-0 in the women's singles tennis semi-finals. On August 2, Bawang Tea Princess tweeted congratulations and gave away 250,000 free cups. On August 3, local time, Zheng Qinwen won the championship. In the early morning of August 4, Bawang Tea Princess released a poster to congratulate Zheng Qinwen, Bawang Tea Princess' "Health Ambassador", for winning the gold medal in the women's singles tennis.

Even the background image of the ordering app was changed to Zheng Qinwen. The bundled quick response made many netizens shout "buy a cup of Bawang Tea Ji to celebrate" after seeing Zheng Qinwen win the championship.

Since the beginning of this year, Bawang Chaji has made great strides in terms of store opening speed and marketing actions. What is rare is that while expanding rapidly, it still clearly builds brand value around the main lines of "Chinese tea" and "health". This Olympic marketing is just the most eye-catching part.

3. Nike stands out by being the audience’s mouthpiece

Of course, it’s not just Ba Wang Cha Ji who made a successful bet.

As a rising star in Chinese tennis, Zheng Qinwen's commercial value has long been recognized by many brands. According to incomplete statistics, she currently holds sponsorship from Nike, Yili, Bawang Cha Ji, Swisse, Lancome, Wilson, Ant Group, Rolex and other brands.

In fact, Nike had already extended an olive branch to Zheng Qinwen nine years ago. At the age of 13, she made a name for herself in the National Youth Tennis Tournament and thus came into Nike's sight.

After years of cooperation, Nike has a deep understanding of Queen Wen's strength and ambition. Therefore, before the Olympics started, Nike designed a poster for her with the words: "The only souvenir I want to take away from Paris is the medal."

However, Nike faces a big challenge. Although it has been with Queen Wen for many years, it cannot get the maximum exposure at the critical moment when she wins glory for the country. In 2022, adidas officially became the official partner of the Chinese Tennis Association. This means that in the Olympics, which attracts the attention of the global audience, Zheng Qinwen will play in the national team uniform of adidas. When she steps on the podium, she needs to wear the award-winning clothes provided by Anta.

How can it become a prominent bag at a critical moment and live up to Queen Wen's companionship for so many years? Nike's method is to make an article around the golden sentence.

In addition to the posters of the famous quotes, Nike also launched a commemorative shirt with the same quotes. In the stands at the finals, Zheng Qinwen's team members wearing the commemorative shirts were captured by the camera and entered the audience's field of vision.

After the game, Zheng Qinwen's Weibo post echoed the golden sentence, "I took away the Paris souvenir I wanted most."

After Zheng Qinwen won the championship, Nike immediately changed the copy of the commemorative shirt to "The only souvenir you want to take away from Paris is the gold medal." The same product has sold more than 1,000 since it was put on the shelves.

This was not enough. The day after Zheng Qinwen won the championship, Nike hung a huge poster of Zheng Qinwen in the Xujiahui subway transfer channel, attracting a large number of people to take photos. Although he was wearing adidas, who could tell?

The reason why Nike's catchphrase marketing can last forever is that it always holds on to an unchanging need - the audience needs mouthpieces to praise the Olympic spirit and celebrate and release emotions. No matter how the media environment changes or how the platform for expressing emotions changes, we still need mouthpieces a hundred years later.

4. Starbucks x Yonex: Finding an Olympic partner

Signing an Olympic official is expensive; signing an athlete is also expensive. Is there any Olympic marketing method with a lower threshold?

Starbucks chose a roundabout way to save the country: collaborating with sports brands that entered the Olympics.

On July 20, Starbucks officially announced its collaboration with sports brand "YONEX". The two parties launched the world's first co-branded racket and created a "Celebrate the Court" event in Beijing. On the first day, Lin Dan was invited to the event.

YONEX was founded in 1946 and is a world-renowned badminton equipment manufacturer and the official strategic partner of the Chinese National Badminton Team. Lin Dan, Lee Chong Wei and Taufik Hidayat, athletes familiar to Chinese badminton fans, were all contracted athletes of YONEX.

For this collaboration, Starbucks also made a comprehensive attack in food, drink and daily use. First, two coffee drinks were launched - Sparkling Wine Flavor Cold Brew and Butterbeer Flavor Mianyun, which are non-alcoholic but have a wine aroma, and are positioned as a companion for watching games. Secondly, there are sports-style desserts, badminton sea blue cupcakes and table tennis cupcakes. Finally, there are the Vitality Badminton series of products, including cups, tableware, sports towels, bottle openers, etc.

In the entire joint venture, Starbucks did not mention the Olympics, but it took advantage of the Olympic sports traffic. Take its badminton-shaped bottle opener as an example. On Taobao and Xianyu, it has been sold at a premium of 2-3 times, and there is a risk of out-of-stock.

Ultimately, this is related to the positioning of sports in China - competitive sports and spectator sports are no longer king, mass sports are slowly growing. People are not only spectators, but also athletes. Therefore, the Olympics is not just a competition, but also represents a period of time when people's attention and enthusiasm for sports are unprecedentedly high. For brands, the key is to integrate into this sports atmosphere, which does not necessarily require being completely attached to the word "Olympic".

5. How does Xiaohongshu’s community life integrate into the Olympics?

Although I am not present at the Paris Olympics, netizens who love the Olympics are all on Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu, which is good at "creating festivals" and has insight into the minds of the new generation of users, created a series of marketing events under the Olympic IP node with the idea of ​​big advertising + small social.

On the small social network, 15 days ago, Xiaohongshu released a "5-minute exercise fast charging" TVC, showing netizens that in 5 minutes in life, they can do some lightweight exercise anytime and anywhere.

Although not everyone can participate in the Olympics, everyone needs a 5-minute exercise to make themselves feel happy and relaxed.

Lift a large bucket of packaged water as a barbell at a convenience store; play rock climbing while getting coffee; play table tennis with your family when there are five minutes left before dinner; when workers are taking the elevator at a leisurely pace, you can also choose to quickly run up the stairs as if you were sprinting a hundred meters...

Xiaohongshu officially introduced that the launch of "5-minute exercise fast charging" is based on the background that more and more users use Xiaohongshu as a sports check-in base to meet everyone's needs for fragmented and life-oriented exercise methods in a fast-paced life. Move anywhere, relax your mood, and get rid of the work atmosphere.

In addition to allowing users to join the sports check-in atmosphere of Xiaohongshu, it also requires important guests to ignite the Olympic topic within the community atmosphere and accelerate the outbreak of the Olympic topic on the Xiaohongshu platform.

On July 11, the news that Liu Xiang officially joined Xiaohongshu was a prelude to Xiaohongshu's Olympic marketing. As the "Asian Flying Man" of the times, Liu Xiang successfully aroused a large number of netizens' memories on the day he joined Xiaohongshu. The content notes shared on his account are also very close to the atmosphere of Xiaohongshu.

The purpose of small social marketing is to allow users to participate in Olympic topics within the platform and activate the sports atmosphere within the community. After all, Xiaohongshu is the birthplace of niche sports, and the proportion of sports people is considerable.

However, in addition to small social marketing, Xiaohongshu also needs a big advertisement to give the platform high-intensity exposure.

On the eve of the opening of the Olympic Games, Xiaohongshu planned a large-scale advertising campaign with wide dissemination and high discussion. It made Liu Xiang and Mbappe work together in a dream to advertise Xiaohongshu. On one side, Liu Xiang asked about delicious restaurants with no queues, small towns with few people and beautiful scenery, and football skills, while on the other side, Mbappe said "Xiaohongshu" in Chinese that was hot to the mouth. The heavyweight guests and magical creativity successfully implanted the search function of Xiaohongshu into the minds of users.

With lightweight social marketing and big creative advertising, Xiaohongshu takes advantage of the Olympic Games to implant the brand into people’s minds.

6. Lei Jun’s 96 hours in Paris

Of course, car companies will not miss the Olympic traffic. Some car companies choose to sponsor the national team, some car companies promise to send cars to the winning players, and some brands directly open stores in Paris. Xiaomi chose to "remain unchanged in the face of change" - Lei Jun once again personally participated.

From arriving in Paris on July 26 to leaving Paris for Munich on July 29, in Lei Jun's own words, this was a "special forces trip."

As soon as he got off the plane on the 26th, Lei Jun went to Xiaomi's Paris store to watch the exhibition, then went to Xiaomi's headquarters in France to conduct research and meet French "Mi fans". In the evening, he rushed to the Seine River to watch the opening ceremony with Lu Weibing. The next day, Lei Jun took a "city walk" on the streets of France and cruised the Seine River at night.

On the 28th, Lei Jun and Su Bingtian had morning tea in Paris, and the two participated in CCTV's "Paris Living Room" column together. On the 29th, Lei Jun left Paris and went to Munich to visit BMW and its factory.

According to incomplete statistics, from the preparation of the trip to leaving Paris, Lei Jun recommended Xiaomi hats, Anta running shoes, Xiaomi sun protection clothes, Xiaomi cars, Xiaomi Anta champion gift boxes and other products to his fans. So far, the content related to this trip to Paris posted by Lei Jun's account has received more than 8 million likes on Douyin alone.

During this trip to Paris, Lei Jun was almost always in front of the camera, sometimes his own camera, sometimes CCTV's camera, these pictures were posted on platforms such as TikTok and Weibo, and were re-circulated by countless bloggers. These contents seem to be records of life, but almost every one of them is related to the Olympics, sports, and Xiaomi, and are important marketing tools for Xiaomi.

7. Looking to the future, Apple’s “2036 Youth Ambition”

As the world looks forward to watching the world’s greatest athletes compete at the Olympics in Paris, Apple’s new iPhone 15 Pro Max commercial looks to the future of aspiring young athletes.

Created by TBWA & Media Arts Lab, the “Young Ambition 2036” campaign was shot by renowned sports photographer and International Photography Hall of Fame member Walter Iooss Jr. and depicts young “talents” in various sports including skateboarding, gymnastics, basketball and table tennis.

One netizen commented: "Apple's ads have been running until the 2036 Olympics." In this campaign, Apple did not continue its previous relatively "showy" presentation method, or highlight motion capture, or show the tension of sports. Instead, it collected a group of sports portraits of teenagers as the subject matter to show the children's concentration during sports.

Walter Iooss once shot a film for Fujifilm called "Fighting for Gold". According to LBB, all the young athletes filmed were under the age of 10, the youngest of whom was an American gymnast and a baseball player from Mexico.

It is worth mentioning that after Chinese athlete Pan Zhanle won the freestyle Olympic gold medal at the Paris Olympics, a "bold statement" made by him in a media interview 10 years ago also went viral on the Internet. At that time, Pan Zhanle, who was only 10 years old, said "It's enough to be faster than Sun Yang". Therefore, perhaps when the 2036 Olympics comes, you will see these "little brothers" and "little sisters" who are working silently on the field.

8. Analysts’ comments: Inside and outside the Olympics, there is a competition venue everywhere.

Young brands are small but great, while mature brands are steady and sophisticated. Domestic and international brands compete on the same stage, each with its own unique strategies.

After looking at the brand marketing cases of this Olympics so far, we found that the Olympic marketing theme does not have to be a traditional grand narrative. Humor, memes and differentiated subversion can all impress users.

Compared to watching a brand shoot a TVC and being moved by it, ordinary users would rather watch the brand tell a story in a different way. Through the brand, they can see the vivid people on the Olympic stage and then project them onto themselves.

In recent years, there have been voices that believe that the influence of the World Cup now surpasses that of the Olympics. However, as a quadrennial event that connects all continents, the Olympics still provides an anchor in the hearts of billions of viewers around the world - sports have no borders, and the touching and admirable spirit of sports competition is an emotional language that can be understood by all mankind.