Why did Rolex, McDonald's, and Gatorade sign Zheng Qinwen in the early stages, but their subsequent marketing performance was mediocre?

The Olympics are the focus of everyone's attention these days, and various brands are gearing up to expect their spokespersons to achieve good results. However, the difference is that some successful spokespersons have mediocre responses from their brands, which seems like they did not make any preparations, wasting a great publicity opportunity. In this article, we will analyze the reasons.

On August 3rd local time, Chinese tennis player Zheng Qinwen won the gold medal in the women's singles event at the Paris Olympics, creating a new milestone for Chinese tennis and becoming a hot super sports star. Her personal public influence and brand commercial value also soared to unparalleled heights.

Undoubtedly, the return on investment of the brands that signed contracts with him will also soar. Just when the public was looking at these brands with envy, the author reviewed their cooperation with Zheng Qinwen and found that the marketing effects of different brands showed a situation of ice and fire. For details, please see yesterday's article "Behind Zheng Qinwen's gold medal at the Paris Olympics: some cooperative brands made a lot of money, while others were silent".

The inventory overview is as follows:

We have seen that after signing contracts with Zheng Qinwen, some brands such as Yili, Nike, Bawang Cha Ji and Lancome have not only fully utilized Zheng Qinwen's IP value on a daily basis through appropriate strategies and timely execution, but also successfully achieved massive exposure and image enhancement of their own brands with the help of this Olympic Games, and are expected to transform Zheng Qinwen's sportsmanship into brand assets.

Brands such as Rolex, McDonald's, and Gatorade not only failed to bring out Zheng Qinwen's brand value on a daily basis, but also lacked relevant publicity during the Paris Olympics. They also failed to seize historical moments such as Zheng Qinwen's victory, and their overall marketing performance was mediocre.

1. Reasons for poor follow-up marketing performance of these brands

Why did they sign the right spokesperson but their marketing performance was not satisfactory? Based on my personal experience and observation of their recent marketing activities, I boldly speculate that the reasons may be as follows:

1. The brand’s spokesperson marketing lacks a global vision and systematic planning.

Spokesperson cooperation, especially for those stars who have achieved outstanding achievements in the sports world, should be regarded as a systematic project in brand strategy.

It requires the brand to have a global vision and regard the cooperation with the spokesperson as a long-term plan closely integrated with products, channels, and daily marketing activities, so as to ensure that the spokesperson is not only a catalyst for brand awareness, but also a long-term promoter of brand value and market position.

Unfortunately, some brands fail to show the depth and continuity they deserve in their collaborations with top athletes like Zheng Qinwen. They may make a big splash at the beginning of a collaboration, attracting public attention through advertisements or press conferences, but rarely follow up afterwards. This lack of consistent marketing strategy often causes the impact of the collaboration to quickly dissipate and fail to form long-term brand assets. At the same time, a single form of collaboration, such as limited to print ads or TV ads, may also limit the influence of the spokesperson, causing the brand to miss the opportunity to establish a deep connection with the target consumers.

This may result in the brand being unable to fully utilize the spokesperson's advantages, such as his or her personal charm, fan base, and authority in specific fields, to enhance the market appeal of the product; secondly, the lack of in-depth interaction and continuous content output will make consumers feel that the cooperation between the brand and the spokesperson is superficial, lacking authenticity and depth, thereby weakening the appeal of the brand story; in addition, if spokesperson marketing is not coordinated with other marketing activities, it will limit the amplification of the spokesperson's influence and waste the huge commercial value behind the spokesperson.

2. Objective reasons and subjective planning have prevented the brand from making Zheng Qinwen the focus of its marketing efforts at this stage.

Brand positioning determines the brand's target customer group and long-term marketing strategy. The marketing environment, marketing tasks and marketing resources the brand faces determine its short-term work arrangements, which may result in the brand being unable to make Zheng Qinwen the focus of its marketing work at this stage.

For example, Rolex's Testimonee is a collection of well-known people in various fields around the world who match its brand tone. Zheng Qinwen is just one of them, more like a spare piece. Although Rolex attaches great importance to the influence of Testimonee, the Olympic tennis event may not be the scene and channel it needs to influence its target customer base at this stage. Zheng Qinwen's previous influence was not shocking enough, which led to Rolex not paying enough attention to the Olympics and Zheng Qinwen.

The author speculates that McDonald's and Gatorade may be unable to disseminate content related to Zheng Qinwen because the advertising cooperation contracts they signed with Zheng Qinwen have expired.

In addition, these two brands have basically no Olympic-related content dissemination, and there may be other subjective and objective reasons: they are concerned about the infringement risk of related dissemination by the official Olympic partners and do not take action, or the marketing team or marketing resources are in the process of change and adjustment, resulting in no Olympic marketing planning. (Because the products and concepts of the two brands are strongly related to sports and healthy living, it is strange not to carry out Olympic marketing, so I guess so.)

3. Lack of efficient and agile marketing planning and response capabilities.

Although these partner brands are all carrying out marketing work related to Zheng Qinwen, the results are still different, which is related to the different levels of marketing planning and responsiveness of each team.

For example, Bawang Cha Ji not only carried out regular publicity, but also planned a series of related marketing activities, striving to achieve a marketing effect of integrating product and effect. In my opinion, this is more attentive than other brands.

The fact that Yili was able to release relevant video marketing content so quickly after winning the championship shows that it had prepared a complete marketing plan for Zheng Qinwen's competition results. There must have been two sets of plans for winning and not winning. Each plan included pictures, videos, activities and other content, demonstrating the team's efficient and agile response capabilities.

In addition, the synergy between the social media matrices of various brands also reflects the differences in response capabilities. Almost no brand can mobilize the accounts of various social media platforms to take unified actions immediately after winning the championship (Yili and Bawang Cha Ji did a good job, but there is room for improvement). Of course, this is related to the fact that the brand's social media matrix accounts are operated by internal teams and outsourcing companies, the relevant teams have no plans, or specific personnel cannot respond in time, but it is recommended that brands should strive to do better.

2. Some suggestions for brands to carry out spokesperson marketing

Here, the author makes some suggestions for brand spokesperson marketing, hoping to help everyone optimize the marketing effect as much as possible and make related work achieve a higher input-output ratio.

1. Plan new stars in advance to reduce investment costs.

Discovering and nurturing future stars is crucial. Brands should identify athletes with great potential but not yet widely recognized as early as possible and sign contracts before they become top stars, which can significantly reduce endorsement costs. The cooperation between Nike, Wilson, Yili and Zheng Qinwen is a good example.

In addition, this long-term partnership can also convey to the public the message that the brand and athletes grow together, win public recognition of the brand, and deepen the emotional connection between the brand and analysis.

2. Carry out systematic spokesperson marketing planning and pursue marketing effects that integrate brand and effect.

Brands should strive to seamlessly integrate spokespersons into their overall marketing strategies, ensure the synergy of all channels such as online and offline, social media, and public relations activities, pursue a marketing effect that combines product and effect, promote product sales and deepen audience favorability in the short term, and achieve the effect of enhancing brand image, establishing and deepening emotional connections with fans in the long term, so that spokesperson marketing can become a powerful means to build brand assets.

Customized content creation is key in the spokesperson marketing process. Developing diversified marketing content including advertisements, activities, short videos, live broadcasts, interactive games, etc. based on the unique attributes of the spokesperson and the interests of the target audience can increase user engagement and conversion rates, and deepen the integration of the spokesperson and the brand, allowing users to establish a strong sense of value identification and emotional connection with the spokesperson and the brand.

3. Sign a careful and detailed contract to ensure the smooth progress of subsequent marketing work.

On the basis of clearly formulating a systematic spokesperson work plan, the brand should sign a careful and detailed contract with the spokesperson, clearly stipulating the content of cooperation between the two parties, the spokesperson's cooperation requirements, the scope of portrait use, time limit, geographical restrictions, media type, etc., to avoid potential legal disputes and ensure that subsequent work receives necessary support.

When I was still working at an agency, I encountered a situation where the brand and the spokesperson did not include a clause in the contract that required the spokesperson to participate in offline activities. When the spokesperson came to shoot a TVC, we were asked to contact the spokesperson to participate in a charity event organized by the company. Fortunately, the spokesperson was quite enthusiastic about charity and attended the event despite the agent's objection.

In addition, considering that the public image of the spokesperson may change at any time, the contract should include crisis management clauses, such as response strategies and compensation conditions when the image is damaged. At the same time, a contract revision mechanism should be set up to allow flexible modification of the cooperation terms when the market environment changes or the needs of both parties are adjusted.

4. Efficiently execute marketing plans and improve agile response capabilities.

Brands need to build a flexible and responsive marketing team that can capture market dynamics in real time, ensure efficient execution of important tasks such as Olympic marketing, and respond quickly to major events. When Zheng Qinwen won the women's singles tennis championship at the Paris Olympics, the execution level and responsiveness of the marketing teams of Yili and Bawang Tea Princess were worthy of praise.

Brands should imagine multiple possible scenarios in advance, including the spokesperson's victory, failure or other important events, and develop corresponding marketing plans. This means preparing a series of pre-produced marketing materials, including advertisements, posters, social media posts, videos, etc. Once the trigger conditions are met, these contents can be released quickly to capture the public's attention in the shortest time and maximize the marketing effect.

Team coordination is the basis for efficient execution and agile response. It ensures smooth communication channels between internal marketing, legal, financial, public relations and other departments, as well as internal marketing teams and agencies, outsourced execution companies, and media partners, ensuring that information is transmitted both promptly and accurately. This helps to mobilize resources quickly at critical moments and seize the best marketing opportunities.

In addition, brands should set clear marketing goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for spokesperson marketing, regularly evaluate the effectiveness of marketing activities and adjust strategies in a timely manner, and continuously optimize the execution of work plans and response mechanisms to ensure that each marketing activity can accurately reach the target audience, maximize return on investment, and enhance brand value.

3. Conclusion

On the dazzling stage of competitive sports, every athlete's glorious moment is a golden opportunity for brand marketing. However, opportunities and challenges coexist. While enjoying the halo of spokespersons, brands are also faced with the test of how to maximize their commercial value.

We hope that in the future, more brands will not only be discerning in the selection of spokespersons, but also strive for excellence in the execution of marketing strategies, and jointly create more wonderful brand stories. After all, successful brand marketing is not just about growth in numbers, but also about the in-depth dissemination of brand culture and values, and resonance with the hearts of consumers.

When sports spirit and brand vision meet, what kind of dazzling light will bloom? This scene is worth looking forward to.

Author: Chen Hao

WeChat Official Account: Brand Market Relativity