Who is there at the Paris Olympics?

The 2024 Paris Olympics is not only a global sports event, but also an excellent stage for brand marketing. From luxury brands to sports giants, from beverage giants to tea brands, major companies have seized this opportunity to showcase their brand image and enhance their brand value. This article will give you an in-depth understanding of how different brands use the Olympics to carry out fancy marketing, as well as their performance and strategies in this international event.

The marketing enthusiasm of brands has been completely ignited by the Paris Olympics in the summer of 2024.

French luxury group LVMH spent 150 million euros to become a senior partner of this Paris Olympics, so this Olympics was full of "debauchery": the Olympic medals were designed by the royal jeweler Chaumet, the torch box and medal box used LV's classic Monogram and checkerboard patterns, and the century-old top luxury menswear brand Berluti customized 1,500 suits for the French team.

LVMH Group CEO Arnault said in an interview with France News Radio: "We don't care about how much money we spend, but the image of Paris."

According to the official website of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the sponsorship income of this Paris Olympics is 1.226 billion euros. The official partners are divided into four categories: global partners (15), senior partners (7, LVMH is in this category), official partners (13), and official sponsors (44).

Image source: Paris Olympic official website

However, if a brand wants to take advantage of the Olympic traffic, there are more ways than just becoming an official sponsor of the Olympics. They can use Olympic elements for "ambush" marketing, or become a partner of a certain region's broadcasting media.

NBC Universal, the media group that owns the Olympic broadcasting rights in the United States, said it had sold $1.2 billion in advertising, setting a new sales record in Olympic history, of which $350 million came from new clients.

According to CCTV News, as the international media that won the bid for the Paris Olympic Games broadcasting project, China Media Group's marketing revenue for the Paris Olympic Games broke the record of all previous Olympic Games, with the number of platforms and contract amounts exceeding all previous Olympic Games.

The rising advertising revenue shows that brands attach unprecedented importance to this Olympics.

1. Sports giants battle in Paris

The Olympics has always been a core scene for sports brands to compete for. It is the best way for a brand to gain popularity, and sometimes it can even make a small brand a household name. According to statistics from SponsorUnited, a sports and entertainment intelligence platform, 368 sportswear brands are competing for sponsorship or media resources from Olympic-related entities.

Before 1976, this war was dominated by Adidas and Puma for most of the time. The founder of Nike described it in "Shoe Dog": "They are like a pair of Keystone police chasing each other in the Olympic Village, committed to making all athletes wear their shoes."

In 1976, Nike, still a small company, joined the battle and bet on the top three in the Olympic 1000-meter trials. The effect Nike wanted to achieve was to make people think that "only Olympic athletes wearing Nike can win gold medals." That year, Nike's sales doubled to $14 million.

We all know what happened next. Thanks to sponsorships of various events, Nike is now a global leader alongside Adidas.

But recently, the situation of Nike and Adidas is not optimistic, with high inventory, sluggish sales, and new brands squeezing market share... For them, what could be more boosting than the Paris Olympics that has attracted global attention?

99 days before the opening of the Olympic Games, Adidas officially released the "Athlete Equipment Series" containing 49 shoes at the "Road to Paris" press conference. 36Kr learned that Adidas is the sports brand covering the most events in this Olympic Games, covering 41 different events, including traditional events such as track and field, tennis, basketball, as well as new events such as breakdancing and skateboarding, belonging to 9 national teams.

Nike also started its Olympic marketing early. Not only did it erect six Nike orange sculptures in front of the Palais Brongniart in Paris, it also invited 40 (this number is not all of Nike's sponsorship for this Olympics) top athletes to showcase Nike's footwear, clothing and technology.

Heidi O'Neill, Nike's president of consumer, product and brand, revealed in an interview with the media earlier: "This Olympics will be our largest one... This will be our largest media expenditure."

The ups and downs of the sports footwear and apparel market share are also reflected in the Olympic arena. For example, lululemon is frequently appearing in the Winter Olympics and the Olympic Games, and the popular On also made its mark in this Paris Olympics.

According to Fortune, the number of athletes wearing On running shoes at the 2024 Paris Olympics has more than tripled, with 66 athletes using equipment provided by the company, compared to 20 at the last Tokyo Olympics. Fortune summed up the trend as: "Challenging Nike, Adidas and Puma, On is dominating the Paris Olympics."

On, a brand that was once considered a niche brand, is replicating Nike's feat of the past and moving from a niche to the mainstream through a global event.

Of course, On is not the only company that wants to share a piece of the pie with Nike and Adidas. Chinese brands such as Anta are also eyeing the market. Anta has been a partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee for more than 10 years since 2009. All Chinese athletes who take the stage will wear Anta's shoes and clothing to receive awards.

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2. Beverage giants’ fancy activities

Since the era of “a pound of milk a day makes Chinese people strong”, milk has been linked to the concept of health. From Beijing to Paris, dairy companies have never missed the Olympic Games.

In this Olympics, Yili is the official dairy partner of the Chinese sports delegation at the 2024 Paris Olympics, while Mengniu is the Olympic Global TOP Partner, and they and Alibaba are the only two companies among the top sponsors.

Online, the marketing tension between the two companies has been growing since May. Yili launched the campaigns "If China wins a few gold medals, Yili will give away a few gold medals" and "If China ranks in the top three, Yili will give away free meals." The logo of the Paris Olympics was jokingly called "looks like Lu Yu" by Chinese netizens, so Yili took the opportunity to invite Lu Yu to be the "Paris-like ambassador" of its yogurt brand, using the meme to spread the word.

Image source: Yili Weibo

Mengniu's high-end milk brand Telunsu teamed up with the French Encounter Museum to paint 30 famous paintings on the bottle, creating a "museum on the milk bottle" and promoting it on Xiaohongshu.

Athletes were even more overwhelmed with milk sponsorship. Yili formed a "Yili Team" consisting of outstanding new generation athletes such as Fan Zhendong, Sun Yingsha, and Quan Hongchan, while Mengniu sponsored Chinese track and field athletes Lin Yuwei and Chen Jiapeng.

In addition to Yili and Mengniu, other dairy companies can also be seen at the Paris Olympics. For example, Sanyuan chose to join hands with the national weightlifting team, and Junlebao Dairy became the official partner of China's top ten national teams (gymnastics, synchronized swimming, cycling, fencing, etc.).

Even though the competition among dairy companies looks very tense, it is still much more rational than in previous years.

"Caijing" quoted relevant persons from dairy companies as saying that the number of dairy companies participating in Olympic marketing this year has decreased (Feihe and Ausnutria have clearly stated that they have no relevant plans. Both have carried out marketing activities during the Tokyo Olympics). The reason is that many companies have incorporated sports marketing into their long-term strategies. Faced with the current situation of slow recovery of the consumer market and pressure on performance, brands are becoming rational.

In the beverage industry, functional drinks are also a category that is keen on sponsoring events, such as Red Bull, which is keen on sponsoring extreme sports. E-sports and sports events are closely related to energy replenishment, and Dongpeng Special Drink did not miss the Paris Olympics and became the gold partner of China Central Radio and Television's Paris Olympics broadcast.

While the offline water war is fierce, the Olympic marketing is a little restrained. Yilibao has been the official drinking water for the Chinese national team for several consecutive years and has sent more than 40,000 bottles of products to France in advance. Nongfu Spring, like Dongpeng Special Drink, is one of the gold partners of China Central Radio and Television's Paris Olympic Games broadcast. In comparison, Wahaha has been much quieter.

3. Tea drinks go overseas and open stores along the Seine

The tea beverage market is becoming more and more competitive, and it can even be described as "a new product every three days, a joint venture every five days". Brands will naturally not miss the Olympics, a highly anticipated marketing opportunity.

In July, taking advantage of the Olympic fever, HEYTEA built a pop-up store called "HEYTEA Paris Games Tea Room" in the 11th arrondissement of Paris on the right bank of the Seine. Bawang Tea Ji followed suit and opened a pop-up store in the busy Paris Saint-Lazare train station.

Bawang Chaji has erected two huge cups in front of its store, printed with Bawang Chaji's iconic patterns, which are quite eye-catching. Heytea has transformed its store into a viewing room with oriental Zen design aesthetics, and also launched peripherals that combine Chinese calligraphy brushes with Olympic elements.

36Kr learned that on the first day of opening of the "HEYTEA Paris Game Viewing Tea Room", more than 1,000 cups of tea were sold, with total sales exceeding 10,000 euros, and two limited edition sports badge peripherals were also sold out in a short time.

Tea brands that "moved" their stores to Paris are leveraging marketing opportunities on the one hand, and on the other hand, they are also showing their ambition to accelerate their overseas expansion. As early as 2018, Heytea opened its first overseas store in Singapore, and in 2019, Bawang Chaji also opened a store in Malaysia, both of which started their overseas expansion journey.

From the perspective of market layout strategy, Heytea prefers the European and American markets, while Bawang Chaji focuses more on the Southeast Asian market.

As of the end of last year, Heytea had nearly 100 overseas stores, including more than 50 stores in Malaysia. So far, Heytea has 70 stores overseas, covering Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada and South Korea.

Heytea and Bawangchaji, which are competing head-on on the streets of Paris, have also made many marketing moves for the domestic market. The general idea can be summarized as: signing athletes and using them to highlight the brand's health concept.

On July 5, Bawang Tea announced Liu Xiang as the brand's global health ambassador. Later, it officially announced that seven world-class athletes, including Liu Xiang, Wang Shun, Zheng Qinwen, Chen Qingchen, Jia Yifan, Liu Qingyi, and Wang Ruimiao, would form the "Health Ambassador Group".

On July 22, Heytea officially announced that Zhao Lina, the former No. 1 goalkeeper of the women's national football team, would be the brand's health goalkeeper, and together they would uphold the "healthy bottom line of tea drinks" of genuine quality and health and peace of mind.

Other tea brands have also extended olive branches to athletes. Shanghai Auntie signed Zhang Changning as its spokesperson, while Cha Baidao signed Yang Liwei and Yang Shuyu as its spokespersons, almost all of whom are rising sports stars born after 1995 or even 2000.

It is worth mentioning that Heytea, which wants to highlight the concept of health, and Anta, which wants to be younger, launched a "Joyful Winning" themed collaboration, and simultaneously launched a new Anta champion collaboration version of A Xi image, taking the opportunity to play an interesting cross-border collaboration.

4. Final Thoughts

Compared with the Tokyo Olympics, people around the world have recovered from the epidemic and focused on Paris.

With the luxurious blessing of LVMH, the host city Paris has added a bit of romance and drama. Consumer brands that want to stand on the world stage have reason to cherish this marketing opportunity.

But in this fragmented era of short videos, there are very few public events that can attract global attention, and the Olympic marketing war has a more helpless tone: this is a kind of marketing that has to be done, because if you don’t do it, your opponents will do it.