On February 8, 18-year-old "talented girl on twoboards" and Beijing athlete Gu Ailing lived up to expectations and won a gold medal for the Chinese sports delegation in the final of the women's big jump event of freestyle skiing at the Beijing Winter Olympics, which was also the first gold medal ever won by the Chinese team in the women's snow event of the Winter Olympics.
It is worth mentioning that Gu Ailing is also the new darling of the current fashion and luxury brands. According to the incomplete statistics of "Hualizhi", there are about 14 fashion and luxury brands that have reached brand endorsements or cooperative relations with Gu Ailing, and if the endorsements of other fields such as food and health, home, communications, and finance are included, there are currently 30 cooperative brands in Gu Ailing, far exceeding many first-line stars. After today's noon valley Ailing won the gold, topics related to its endorsement quickly appeared on Weibo's hot search.
The following is a brief summary of the 14 fashion and luxury brands that Have cooperated with Gu Ailing based on public information:
Fashion and luxury brands choose Gu Ailing for three reasons
1. The "new" standard of the brand spokesperson: positive energy and authenticity
In recent years, entertainment star spokespersons have frequently "overturned", and there are vulnerabilities and risks hidden under the seemingly perfect "human design", which has made fashion and luxury brands learn a lot of lessons and be more cautious in employing people. (Related reading of "Gorgeous Chronicles": Depth |.) Brands and Spokespersons (Part 2): Why should brands and spokespersons "break the circle"? ）
In this context, sports stars are becoming more and more popular with brands. Taking Gu Ailing as an example, among many sports stars, Gu Ailing is one with a special fashion advantage. With her strong strength, high appearance, excellent bilingual ability and multicultural background, as well as her multiple identities as an athlete, a high-achieving student at Stanford University, and an IMG contract model, she has quickly become the focus of fashion and luxury brands.
According to a recent report by Bain & Company, Generation Y and Gen Z are expected to account for more than two-thirds of the market by 2025. Generation Z, who grew up in the Internet generation, is not only the main force of personal luxury consumption, but also puts forward higher requirements for the marketing of luxury brands, they are eager to have more interaction with brands, and sports stars with positive energy and true attributes are one of the wonderful bridges for brands to establish communication with consumers.
Through Gu Ailing, everyone sees not only a perfect high-energy athlete, but also a full "Generation Z" image that loves life, dares to choose, and dares to challenge, which may be the attitude that brands and consumers really want to see from a "spokesperson".
2. Move closer to "outdoor sports" and "young people"
In the face of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Chinese consumers are particularly enthusiastic about ice and snow sports. At present, there are more than 500,000 notes on "skiing" in the Little Red Book. It is worth mentioning that Xiaohongshu also became the brand spokesperson of the official Xuangu Ailing in January this year.
Luxury brands and Gu Ailing, but also with the skiing itself is inseparable from the relationship, the main population of ski sports is the pursuit of high-end leisure life of high consumers, and the audience of luxury brands is partially overlapping. Coupled with the fact that luxury brands have been moving closer to the movement trend and young people in recent years, Gu Ailing has become an ideal candidate. According to Franziska Gsell, Chief Marketing Officer of IWC, "Gu Ailing is the youngest brand ambassador in the IWC family. ”
As a freelance skier, skiing has naturally become Gu Ailing's earliest contact with brand endorsements. Back in 2016, she entered into a partnership with ski service platform GOSKI. Since 2019, he has endorsed the Swiss skiing brand Action Skis.
In June 2019, Gu Ailing announced her Chinese citizenship, which opened the door for her endorsement in the Chinese market. In 2020, ANTA Sports invited her to become a brand spokesperson to help lay out the women's sports market.
In 2021, Gu Ailing won 2 gold and 1 silver at the X Games World Extreme Games, and more endorsement invitations poured in after that. It is reported that before 2021, Gu Ailing's endorsement fee is only $1 million, and the price of X Games' descendants has risen sharply. According to the statistics of "Hualizhi", of the 30 brand endorsements/cooperations of Gu Ailing, about 25 were achieved in 2021 and later.
In the professional sports sector, she also became the spokesperson for the sportswear brand Oakley in June 2021, and ski goggles are an important product of the brand. In October 2021, she also became a global ambassador for Therabody, the manufacturer of the fascia gun brand Theragun.
In 2020, Gu Ailing wore the Italian fashion brand SPORTMAX for the first time in the fashion magazine "InStyle Pictorial". With her outstanding image, she has been on the cover of many fashion magazines such as SuperELLE Xinyang, CHAMPION Sports Illustrated, V Magazine, VOGUE Hong Kong, Jia ren NOW, Zhizu GQ, ELLE, VOGUE+, etc.
This has helped her attract many luxury brands over the past year, including becoming a brand ambassador for IWC and Tiffany, appearing in Louis Vuitton's Twist handbag campaign, participating in Brunello Cucinelli's Be Your Change brand campaign and filming promotional videos. In September 2021, she was on the Red Carpet at the Met Gala.
3. Present the image of women who represent contemporary values
Gu Ailing said in today's post-match interview that he hopes that his performance will inspire Chinese young people, especially Chinese girls to contact ice and snow sports and not be afraid of obstacles. She said: "I'm not here to beat other athletes, I'm not here to skate better than others, I'm trying to push my boundaries... Hopefully, through this, more girls can break their boundaries and make them feel 'if she can do it, then I can do it too'. ”
This coincides with the values and positioning that many brands want to convey to consumers.
In June 2021, Victoria's Secret, an American lingerie brand in transition, officially announced that Ailing Tani was an ambassador and invited her to join VS Collective, a collaborative initiative for women from different backgrounds around the world, which also includes four-seat Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, a Japanese professional tennis player, and megan Rapinoe, a professional footballer.
After the official announcement of Gu Ailing, the two sides jointly released a sports blockbuster, which intuitively demonstrated the new positioning of Victoria's Secret. Victoria's Secret is pursuing a long-term rebranding strategy with the goal of becoming "the voice of women around the world" again.
In addition to fashion and luxury brands, Gu Ailing's cooperative brands in the food/health care field also include Luckin Coffee, Mengniu, Yuanqi Forest, Tomson By-Health and Red Bull; the brands cooperating in the home furnishing field include Midea, Kohler, Sankeshu and Mousse Bedding; the mobile platform has Xiaohongshu, Quark, Tokyo Retail; the communication field has China Mobile; and the financial field has Bank of China, Chinese Insurance, Visa and so on.
According to the "Cbnst Daily", after winning the World Extreme Games and the World Championships in January and March 2021, Gu Ailing's endorsement fee has risen to 1.8 million US dollars. At present, Gu Ailing's endorsement is exclusively represented by IMG's Chinese subsidiary Endeavor Weimei.
More fashion and luxury brands are looking back at athletes
In January 2021, Louis Vuitton announced professional tennis player Naomi Osaka as a global brand ambassador, marking the first time the brand has selected athletes as brand ambassadors. In fact, as the world's most influential top tennis player, Naomi Osaka herself is also quite popular with luxury brands, and in the same month, the Swiss luxury watch brand TAG Heuer also officially announced her as a global brand ambassador, and cooperated to create a TAG Heuer submersible series watch.
After Louis Vuitton partnered with Naomi Osaka, more and more luxury brands sent invitations to athletes.
Sun Yiwen, the fencing goddess who became famous at the Tokyo Olympics, became a friend of the Dior brand, and she filmed a commercial to showcase the new Dior Vibe series in 2022.
Above: Sun Yiwen
In January, Lululemon, a Canadian high-end yoga sports brand, announced the appointment of 19-year-old Leylah Fernandez, runner-up of the 2021 U.S. Open, as its new brand ambassador. (See Gorgeous Chronicles: Lululemon will launch her first tennis suit collection in the spring, appointing 19-year-old tennis actress Leylah Fernandez as a brand ambassador.)
On February 5, the Chinese team won the gold medal in the 2000m relay race of short track speed skating at the Winter Olympics, and OMEGA officially announced athlete Fan Kexin as the brand's best friend. In January, OMEGA also officially announced the famous ping-pong player Ma Long as the brand's celebrity ambassador.
About Gu Ailing
Gu Ailing was born in 2003 in San Francisco, usa, to an American father and a Beijing native mother. Her skiing career was heavily influenced by her mother, who graduated from Peking University and Stanford University and was a member of the Peking University speed skating team and ski instructor.
Gu Ailing began to contact skiing at the age of 3, participated in the training of professional ski teams at the age of 8, won the National Championship in the Ski Competition in the United States at the age of 9, began to participate in adult competitions at the age of 13, and won about 50 medals at the age of 14.
When Beijing announced the success of her bid for the Olympic Games in 2015, Gu Ailing and her mother were in Beijing, and when she set a goal to participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics, she pulled the people around her and said: "In 2022, please come to see me!" ”
In 2019, 15-year-old Gu Ailing announced through personal social media that she would renounce her American citizenship and become Chinese instead, saying in a post that "I am proud to represent China at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in three years." In the same year, Gu Ailing's registered nationality on the official website of the International Snow Federation (FIS) was changed from the United States to China.
Since then, this talented ski girl has brought a series of impressive achievements to China's skiing. In the 2021-2022 World Cup season alone, she won 6 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze for a total of 9 medals. As of the Beijing Winter Olympics, she has won 12 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze for China.
In addition to his status as an athlete, Gu Ailing is also a proper academic bully. She completed her high school coursework two years early and was admitted to Stanford University in 2020 with a high score of 1580 out of 1600. In order to prepare for the Beijing Winter Olympics, she decided to postpone the school for a year.
In addition to skiing, her hobbies are very extensive, and through social media you can see that she is passionate about running, basketball, piano, equestrianism, ballet, surfing and so on.
丨 Image source: Gu Ailing Instagram screenshot, Dior official Weibo
丨 Responsible editor: Zhu Ruoyu