Sports marketing ushered in the "golden age". Time flies so fast. When most people's memories still linger on the "hard-to-get" Beijing Winter Olympics at the beginning of the year, the sports world ushered in another major feast at the end of the year - the Qatar Football World

Sports marketing ushering in the "golden age"

Time flies so fast, when most people's memories still remain at the beginning of the year Beijing Winter Olympics "a trick is hard to find", at the end of the year the sports world ushered in another major feast - the Qatar Football World Cup. The World Cup is not only the highest level event in world football, but also the global sports event covering the widest range of people. The bright stars, the emergence of heroes, and the sportsmanship throughout have made the World Cup a collective memory for generations. Popular sports events such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup have attracted national attention beyond sports competitions because of their connotation, history and reflected fighting spirit and national will. At the same time, they have also attracted a large number of brands to invest in them and enjoy the feast brought by sports with the public.

Of course, sports marketing is not limited to these competitions. Since building a sports power has become the goal and task of my country's sports reform and development in the new era, my country's sports industry has accelerated its development in recent years, and marketing activities around various sports events have become increasingly frequent. At the consumer level, under the influence of the global COVID-19 epidemic, the scene of mass sports has also changed: working from home, sports apps and Liu Genghong’s fitness live broadcast have become hot topics of discussion; travel is restricted, camping has become a popular leisure method for young groups, and it has also led to the popularity of sports such as Frisbee, hiking, cycling and skateboarding. We have seen that "pan-sports" has increasingly become a familiar life scene for everyone, driving the development and changes of sports marketing.

We are ushering in the "golden age" of domestic sports marketing.

The marketing environment is becoming increasingly complex, and creativity has become more important.

From a marketing perspective, whether it is sports events or pan-sports, there are rich scenes and topics, which are marketing opportunities for major brands and a powerful way to communicate with consumers.

In the past communication environment, traffic was monopolized by powerful media. Sports marketing focused on media resources. By using high-profile sports events/sports scenes and strong media resources, a large amount of attention and traffic could be gathered in a short period of time. However, if there is no good creative content and marketing actions to attract and undertake, these traffics will soon disappear again. At that time, big ideas + powerful high-exposure events/media resources + double micro were the common strategy for brands. Under this approach, good creativity can help brands quickly find their own consumers in the traffic attracted by popular sports events/sports scenes (attracting the attention of target consumers), and influence their cognition and behavior (increase awareness, create demand, stimulate purchases, etc.).

Today’s marketing environment has undergone tremendous changes: on the traffic environment side, major e-commerce platforms, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, WeChat private domain ecology, etc. are where traffic is divided and gathered, and their rules and gameplay have their own systems; on the consumer side, those who were born on the Internet and grew up in the Internet era Generation Z young people have entered the stage of history, and women are awakening to self-awareness. These are reshaping the core consumer structure communicated by marketing. On the brand side, customers' marketing goals and budget allocation methods have changed: Today's customers pay more attention to sales conversion. Marketing methods such as "marketing + marketing" related e-commerce, live broadcasts and short videos have risen, and private domain marketing has grown rapidly. Changes in the media environment, consumers' values, attitudes and behaviors, customers' marketing goals, etc. have further increased the difficulty of reaching, understanding, and influencing consumers. Marketers today face greater challenges than ever before.

In order to attract and influence target consumers in a noisy environment, the once "big creativity + strong high-exposure events/media resources + dual micro" approach has gradually transitioned to "big creativity + multi-channel, multi-scenario" content communication. Likewise, this also poses new challenges for upgrading creative content capabilities. In today's complex marketing environment, creative content capabilities are more important than ever.

Creative content should become a "traffic password" This requires creative content to be based on insights into the marketing environment, consumer and brand needs, helping brands accurately attract target consumers, while building brand minds and communicating with consumers in a more scientific, in-depth and long-term way. Today, creative content should not only be the "traffic password" that creates instant attention, but also become the "mental password" that continues to empower marketing.

In a successful sports marketing, the brand spirit and brand proposition cannot be released only through long content carriers, but need to be creatively integrated into every touch point around consumers, into visual, interactive, information persuasion, product design, public relations copywriting and other aspects of content to achieve all-round brand building.

Improve the "issue power" of creative content in sports marketing

Using sports as the entrance to marketing means more than just the exposure and transformation brought about by leveraging or building momentum. Sports marketing plays a more important role in branding. The sportsmanship conveyed by sports is a powerful endorsement for brand building, and is also the value threshold for attracting and screening target consumer groups. With the help of sports events and popular sports, the creative outline leads and coordinates consumer communication on different platforms, and plays the role of "traffic password × mental password" to ultimately achieve marketing goals. So how to let creativity play the role of the interactive superposition of the dual codes of "traffic" and "mind", so that the penetrating power of creative content becomes stronger, thereby promoting the conversion and realization of traffic? Improving the "issue power" of creative content is the key to breaking the situation.

"Issue power" is an upgrade of the "topic" in the brand's common traffic strategy in the content marketing practice of the Blue Label Digital team. It creates a new content tension by mining the value insights of the target group and social public opinion. Creative content with strong "issue power" will be more penetrating because it is consistent with consumers' values, and can arouse deep resonance among target groups, giving brand marketing actions a higher sense of meaning.

Take JD.com ’s marketing at the Tokyo Olympics as an example: In this marketing, JD.com focused on helping the national team compete in the Olympics, grasping the insight that “everyone has to face their own playing field and have to play”, and then combined with JD.com’s brand The brand advocates "love" and creates a sports spirit issue of "dare to play for love", and integrates the issue into communication touchpoints such as brand videos, creative visuals inside and outside the site, Weibo & WeChat Moments, subway immersive exhibitions, Xiaohongshu KOL & KOC, etc., empowering JD.com's seven major business divisions, platform promotions, three supermarkets and top 100 brands. In the end, the event effectively enhanced the relationship between JD.com’s brand, the Olympics, and the national team, inspired Chinese people’s pride, and demonstrated the spirit of JD.com’s brand’s continuous breakthroughs. It successfully used the Olympics to increase JD.com’s brand influence and sales, and at the same time leveraged JD.com’s business units and brands to participate in co-construction, achieving a win-win situation for all parties.

The topical power of creative content can not only bring the brand’s traffic × mind, but also help integrate the traffic play within and between platforms to help the brand’s grass planting, live broadcast sales and long-term conversion. Take Adidas’ marketing case for this year’s “Youth Day” for example. After the Beijing Winter Olympics, Adidas cooperated with my country's youngest Winter Olympic gold medalist and first snowboarding Winter Olympics champion Su Yiming , focusing on the insight that Generation Z young people "always prepare for their own infinite possibilities", combined with the "warm-up mentality" that is often ignored by everyone in the sports spirit, to create a "warm-up start" contemporary youth growth issue.The marketing campaign integrates this topic into all-round consumer contact content such as the Douyin Challenge, Douyin video information flow, Douyin live broadcast, official media matrix, and the "Run Out of the Blue" public welfare activities, integrating the ecology within the platform through the topical power of creative content With the influence of celebrities, experts and ordinary consumers in the cross-platform ecosystem, every creative content and every participant can stimulate the fusion of traffic × mind, and help the brand increase its influence and product sales among Generation Z during the fiercely competitive "Youth Day" marketing node.

Yuan Universe brings new uses for creative content

Of course, whether it is sports or marketing, the development of new technologies is also an indispensable force. As AR/VR, cloud computing, , AI and other technologies become increasingly mature, as well as the impact of the global epidemic, the sports industry is also fully embracing the changes brought about by the Metaverse: the latter solves the problem of digital participation and integration for the former, creating a new connection method and experience for brands, sports IP, and consumers. It is full of attraction and imagination, and affects the future sports industry and sports marketing. The current integration of the sports industry with the Metaverse includes athlete training, audience viewing experience, fan interaction, marketing and promotion, etc. The main methods of layout are focused on NFT, Metaverse event live broadcasts, games, digital space creation, virtual humans, etc. The immersive experience created by Metaverse for consumers will become one of the most important content trends in the future. Similarly, the construction of these contents and experiences also brings new uses for creative content. In marketing, the combination of creative content, technology, media and other factors is like "writing a painting". We believe that no matter how technology develops or media changes, the hand that holds the pen—creative content capabilities—will always be the core force that empowers marketing.