Can the color TV industry turn against the wind by taking advantage of Olympic marketing?

At the beginning of spring, Everything in Vientiane was renewed. With the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games in the spring, it not only stimulated the enthusiasm of the whole people for skiing, but also aroused the enthusiasm of major brands for Olympic marketing. The color TV industry has never missed such a rare "marketing" opportunity, at present, a number of color TV manufacturers have begun to market the event, and the industry is generally optimistic about the pulling effect of the Winter Olympics in the color TV market.

So, can the snow of the Winter Olympics bring the gospel of "spring" to the consumption of the color TV market in the cold winter?

Aim for 8K to get a head start in event marketing

From sponsorship and naming, to offers, advertising, interactive quizzes, etc., the home appliance industry has always been a regular customer of sports marketing. Especially color TV manufacturers, because of the close connection between watching events and color TV products, color TV companies are more enthusiastic about sports marketing than other categories of home appliance manufacturers. With the official opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, it is reported that the Winter Olympics Documentary 8K Ultra HD Test Channel has been officially launched a few days ago, which meets the needs of the audience online at a high standard and brings new marketing opportunities to color TV companies in the layout of the 8K field.

Want to watch the 8K ultra-high-definition Beijing Winter Olympics, the TV at home naturally has to be replaced by 8K TV, and many color TV manufacturers who smell business opportunities have begun to market the event. For example, Changhong implants color TV products through ice and snow variety shows; Hisense and Skyworth start directly from technology to empower the Winter Olympic Games with technology.

The relevant person in charge of Sichuan Changhong said that in the past, Changhong usually participated in the event communication by signing a team, but considering that the brand itself has a national badminton team IP, it chose to take another route this time, that is, in the ski variety show of major video platforms, mango TV's "Follow the Champion to Ski" was selected, and through the variety show IP, the event was deeply implanted with the "Changhong 8K Devil King", showing the various viewing advantages of Changhong 8K TV.

Hisense Video, which has just provided technical support for the production and broadcast of CCTV's 2022 8K Spring Festival Gala program, once again cooperated with CCTV to develop an 8K ultra-high-definition professional monitor at the Beijing Winter Olympics to help CCTV produce and broadcast 8K ultra-high-definition programs for this Winter Olympics. "8K display can only perfectly show its picture quality effect on large-size products, and laser TV is the best display technology carrier for 8K TV," said the relevant person in charge of Hisense Video. It is also worth noting that the "display scheme" of the first domestic snow wax car at the Winter Olympics was also developed by the company.

Skyworth has taken a different approach, in the national key research and development plan "Science and Technology Winter Olympics" key special project "Ice and Snow Project Interactive Multi-dimensional Viewing Experience Technology and System" project, Skyworth Digital's VR team is responsible for the research of VR technology in the project, including VR video adaptive transmission system, 8K set-top box and ultra-short throw VR glasses and other innovative products and systems, to support the live broadcast of the 8K VR competition of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Skyworth Digital said on the investor interactive platform that the 8K program of the Winter Olympics recorded in VR will be able to use Skyworth VR equipment for immersive, interactive free-point of view viewing.

"From the perspective of the experience of watching sports programs, consumers are more inclined to large size, high refresh rate, high definition, high dynamic contrast, especially color TVs with more event content playback capabilities," Dong Min, deputy secretary general of the China Electronic Video Industry Association, told the China State Grid reporter that consumers need more suitable TVs to watch the wonderful events of the Winter Olympics, and corresponding color TV companies will also make full use of the Winter Olympics events to make corresponding promotions. This time, the Winter Olympics for the first time to use 8K live broadcast, for the 8K advantage of the publicity, 8K TV retail, 8K content production reserves and 8K application software and other industry chain will play a positive role, will effectively obtain user recognition and recognition, as well as pull TV brands in this aspect of the resource tilt and market occupation.

Taking advantage of the Winter Olympics Color TV industry 2022 ushered in the "opening red"?

Color TV companies attach so much importance to the Winter Olympics, not only have the ambition to seize the "8K", on the other hand, it is also one of the few marketing breakthrough opportunities that can be seized under the pressure of performance in the past year.

In the past 2021, China's color TV retail sales hit a record low in the past 12 years. According to the data of Aowei Cloud Network, the retail volume of the mainland color TV market fell below the 40 million mark in 2021, reaching 38.35 million units, down 13.8% year-on-year; Retail sales reached 129.6 billion yuan, an increase of 7.2% year-on-year. Compared with 2013, China's 100 color TV households have more than 115 units / 100 households, in 2021, China's color TV 100 households have reached 121.8 units / 100 households, under the high saturation, high scale growth is difficult to reproduce, and even maintaining growth has become a difficult thing.

In addition to the high degree of market saturation, the decline in sales in the color TV industry also has its own internal reasons. Since May 2020, the "strongest LCD panel price increase cycle in history" for 13 consecutive months has caused a sharp increase in the average price of terminal products, which is naturally not conducive to sales data. In addition, nowadays, mobile phone short video entertainment and projection large-screen entertainment have gradually replaced the status of color TV, resulting in a decline in color TV operating rate, an extension of the use period, and insufficient rigid demand, and the total sales volume is naturally not optimistic. Under such background pressure, color TV companies can only seize every possible opportunity for publicity and marketing, hoping to stimulate consumer market consumption. The Beijing Winter Olympics is such a "timely rain" that color TV companies urgently need.

As an important medium for broadcasting sports events, the promotion of events such as the Olympic Games to the television industry is obvious to all. Taking the Tokyo Summer Olympics held last year as an example, according to the global color TV sales report released by TrendForce Jibang Consulting, global TV shipments rose by 10% year-on-year in the first half of 2021 to 98.45 million units. While shipments were 5.8 percent less than initially expected, they have also hit a five-year record high.

In this regard, the Beijing Winter Olympics, Hisense, Changhong and other enterprises believe that the holding of the Winter Olympics will set off a consumer climax of ultra-high-definition large-screen TVs. On the one hand, because the return of big events to the big screen is a trend, in addition, the Winter Olympics will be held in the second half of the Spring Festival, and the possibility of TV viewing is greatly improved. Guotai Junan Securities also analyzed that the wide application of ultra-high-definition display in the Winter Olympics is conducive to cultivating consumer awareness of ultra-high-definition color TV, which is expected to drive the upgrading of color TV consumption and increase the penetration rate of 4K/8K ultra-high-definition TV.

Obviously, the Winter Olympics are expected to bring a certain impetus to the market sales of the color TV industry, but it is also necessary to pay attention to and face up to the fact that the rigid demand in China's color TV market continues to weaken and is affected by cross-category products, and the overall demand is still weak. Taking 8K TV as an example, from the data point of view, the Chinese market will ship 100,000 8K TVs in 2021, and it is expected to reach 180,000 units in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 80%, but the penetration rate is still at a low level. "At present, the 8K TV industry chain is still not mature enough, and the positioning is high-end, the price is too high, and the market size is limited", Zhang Hong, research director of the TV division of Qunzhi Consulting, pointed out that to some extent, the immaturity of 8K is now a difficulty for the color TV industry to recover, based on this, Zhang Hong suggested that color TV related upstream and downstream manufacturers should increase the supply of 8K panels, reduce costs, and improve the hardware industry chain including chips; At the same time, it is necessary to improve the acceptance of 8K and larger size screens in terms of user mentality, and reduce the psychological barriers of user purchase; In addition, in accordance with the "Ultra-high-definition Video Industry Development Action Plan", enrich 8K content, and actively develop large-scale applications of 8K video in the fields of culture, education and entertainment, security monitoring, medical health, intelligent transportation, and industrial manufacturing.

"The pulling effect of sports events on color TV consumption has always been obvious", Dong Min also told reporters that benefiting from the pulling effect of winter Olympic sports events on 8K ultra-high-definition large-screen consumption, he predicted that the recovery of the color TV industry in 2022 can be determined, but it cannot be too optimistic. After all, there are variables in the macro economy and the development of the epidemic, and the changes in user habits, Chinese living rooms and TV attributes have become irreversible. Therefore, how companies can pull users back to the TV is a topic worth paying attention to.