Hot spots around the Winter Olympics are emerging. The audience kept flashing past one strange and new and fun project after another, and the topic changed faster than the steel frame snowmobile.
Naturally, there will be many differences: around Gu Ailing's nationality, Su Yiming's score, almost every fall and penalty on the short track speed skating competition... This is an inevitable argument or even quarrel in every sports competition.
Only the ice piers became the exception. The official mascot of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics truly united the world's audience and was unexpectedly sought after by the whole people before the game. Athletes, members of the delegation, media journalists and the general public are all asking the same question: How can I buy an ice pier?
Lazy Bear Sports tries to explore the reasons for "a pier is difficult to find" from the four perspectives of design, industrial chain composition, dissemination and operation in this article, and enters the mascot business of the sports competition behind it.
1. Design: "Magical Shell" is not so magical
On September 17, 2019, the mascots of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, ice piers and snow rongrong, were officially released to the public.
From the pure appearance, the image of the ice pier clearly does not achieve the effect of being completely refreshing. After all, this is the third panda mascot of the third international comprehensive sports competition in Beijing after the "hope" of the 1990 Asian Games and the "Jingjing" of the 2008 Olympic Games.
Unlike the previous highlight, the surface of the ice pier has a layer of "super-energy ice crystal shell", which also makes the whole design more technological and futuristic. The official introduction describes it as follows: "The overall image resembles an astronaut, implying the creation of the extraordinary, exploring the future, embodying the pursuit of excellence, leading the times, and the infinite possibilities for the future." ”
An ice pier based on a panda (left) and a snow melt based on a lantern (right).
This layer of ice shell is the key idea that makes Cao Xue's design team from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts stand out throughout the mascot collection process.
The documentary "The Birth of the Mascot" tells the whole story of the creation process of the ice pier. In simple terms, it can be divided into three large design versions, namely: rock sugar gourd, ice shell/snow shell panda, and astronaut panda.
Cao Xue, head of the mascot design team for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, revealed in an interview with the B station Up master @ 10,000 that the winter Olympic Organizing Committee's publicity meeting to collect mascot plans was only to go to Guangzhou when there were 3 weeks left before the deadline for submission. "They are worried that their classmates in the south have not seen ice and snow and have no creative inspiration." As a result, it was precisely this team that lacked traditional experience that put forward the idea of rock sugar gourd that made the organizing committee shine.
What follows is the plot that designers are familiar with: revisions of version after edition.
From the first draft to the second draft, the idea of adjustment is to retain the highlights of the ice shell and replace the main elements from snacks to national treasures. "Reducing the cost of education" is the main reason for this round of revisions. Giant pandas are more recognizable than sugar gourds and are Chinese elements that the world recognizes at a glance.
From the second draft to the third draft, it goes through a longer period of detail adjustment and creative packaging. In fact, the second draft includes two alternatives, ice shell panda and snow shell panda, mainly to achieve the combination of "panda + ice and snow" elements, and does not deliberately consider combining with aerospace or scientific and technological elements.
However, when the design team tried to integrate the elements of the "ice ribbon" of the new venue of the Winter Olympics into the ice shell, they suddenly found that the entire design presented a sense of futurism and technology. Therefore, after several modifications and adjustments, this ordinary ice shell naturally became a spacesuit on the mascot.
Three versions of cao xue's team's creative evolution (taken from the documentary "The Birth of the Mascot").
It should be noted that the style finally presented also alludes to some of the design trends in the tide play hand office in recent years.
The elements of the spacesuit are similar to the various "skins" in the game derived from the basic character image. Its advantage is that it can not only continue the cognition of the ip of the old character, but also add freshness and playability. Game skins have also been dubbed by gamers as the code of wealth for major manufacturers, and League of Legends game developer Fist Company made $1.8 billion from skin sales in 2016.
Interestingly, after the ice pier exploded, on February 9, at the official flagship store of Olympic Tmall, a "New Year Skin" dressed in New Year's clothing was also listed.
The sense of technology and the sense of the future are the elements commonly used in the design of the blind box in recent years. Especially in hidden or limited edition products, similar concepts are often added. According to the 2018 blind box price increase list released by the second-hand trading platform Idle Fish, the head IP labubu of the tide play brand Bubble Mart released in the same year was sold for up to 3,000 yuan, up 3.3 times. In the past two years, some hot NFT digital collections will also reflect similar technological elements in design.
2. Supply chain: There are risks in preparing goods in advance, and producers are cautious
However, even with the addition of ingenious and trendy design concepts, the ice pier has been in an embarrassing state for a long time in the nearly one and a half years after the release of the ice pier. This has also become the biggest question for many people about this trend after the explosion of the ice pier in recent days - if the product is really so good, why is it only now on fire?
Regarding the driving force of communication, we will expand below, here first talk about the supply chain, the early stage of such market feedback greatly affected the production and sales of the enthusiasm for stockpiling, resulting in a "pier is difficult to find" situation.
To answer this question, we can first look at the supply chain structure related to the licensed goods of the Winter Olympics and the key companies in it.
Enterprises associated with licensed goods for the Beijing Winter Olympics are divided into two categories: "licensed producers" and "licensed retailers". From a commodity circulation perspective, producers are upstream of the retailer's supply chain.
Of the 29 "licensed producers", a total of 3 companies are qualified to produce licensed goods in the category of "plush and other material toys". They are: Beijing Yuanlong Yatu Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yuanlong Yatu"), Jinjiang Hengsheng Toys Co., Ltd., nantong Golden Phoenix Craft Toy Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
The latter two only have the production qualification of this one category, while Yuanlong Yatu has the production qualification of three categories of "badges, keychains and other non-precious metal products", "precious metal products", "plush and other material toys" (a manufacturer has up to 3 categories of production qualifications), and the sales rights of all categories of special goods.
In the financial reports of the listed company Yuanlong Yatu in the past 4 years, the revenue data of each single category of licensed goods was not separately published. But in the company's 2019 annual report on the next year's business plan, you can see the following two sentences:
Grasp the opportunity of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and launch a precious metal licensed souvenir business and sponsor large customer customization business.
The company will seize the opportunity of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, on the one hand, through the production and sales of Winter Olympic souvenirs to thicken the company's performance, on the other hand, the use of the company's Winter Olympics concession qualifications to develop integrated marketing core customers.
That is to say, as a leading gift industry, Yuanlong Yatu, on the one hand, pays more attention to the category of "precious metal products"; on the other hand, it considers the Winter Olympic concession qualification as a starting point, and integrates marketing around the company's main gift and gift business to serve the original alibaba, millet, Nestle, Tencent and other customers.
Taken from Yuen Long Yatu's 2019 annual report.
One of the reasons that affect the stockpiling of these suppliers is that in addition to the market feedback after the launch of the mascot, it is also necessary to refer to the sales performance of the mascots of previous competitions.
Judging from the experience of several international sports competitions in the past in the 21st century, mascots are not a simple and profitable business. The fiery supply and demand relationship of "one pier is difficult to find" is not common, and there are many reasons here.
The 2006 World Cup was a disaster for Germany's Nici. The lion-based mascot image of "Grio VI" was met with strong resistance from local consumption – the Germans believed that the lion was the representative of the "sworn enemy" England, and the eagle was the totem of their own people. Nici didn't even make it to the opening of that tournament, declaring bankruptcy early in May of that year.
It is worth mentioning that in the process of creative mascot selection for the Beijing Winter Olympics, some people have also proposed to combine the Chinese lunar zodiac culture and use the image of the tiger as the prototype of the mascot. However, it was precisely in view of the fact that this image may conflict or misunderstand with the Korean "Taiji Tiger" element, and this proposal was not finally adopted.
There is one cultural reason, which can also see why China has been choosing pandas in recent years. By the 2012 London Olympics, the British had flipped the ship again in the same business. Due to the popularity of the pre-Olympic products, Hornby, a 111-year-old manufacturer, decided to increase its investment and expand production. As a result, the sales of mascots plummeted with the end of the Olympic Games, causing a large inventory crisis. According to the Guardian at the time, Hornby, which had expected to make a profit of £2 million in 2012, ended up recording a loss of £1 million.
It can also be seen from the above two cases that although the mascot is regarded as a "licensed commodity", it is not easy for the authorized person to make commercial judgments. More is likely to not be sold, and less, there will be such a situation as the Beijing Winter Olympics, which is "difficult to find".
In Lazy Bear Sports' podcast "Hawkeye Time", we focused on the business of the mascot of the competition, welcome to scan the code to listen.
3. Transmission: from "tap water" to "one person, one pier"
The different amount of sound transmitted in different periods is currently recognized as the key reason for the "difficult to find one pier". Before recapping the propagation path of the ice pier, let's look at another set of meta-long yatu data.
In the 2021 semi-annual report, Yuanlong Yatu disclosed that the Beijing Winter Olympics licensed souvenirs and precious metals achieved revenue of 70.7384 million yuan, an increase of 35.96% year-on-year.
Before the opening of the Winter Olympic Games, Yuanlong Yatu once again disclosed that the company's Beijing Winter Olympics licensed commodity "Opening Commemorative Gold and Silver Bars" has sold more than 100 million yuan since its debut on the official licensing channel on January 4, 2022, and has sold more than 100 million yuan by January 28.
In 24 days, the revenue of a single product exceeded the sum of half a year for all three categories, and the strategic weight was self-evident.
In addition, according to Lazy Bear Sports, even on January 26, only 9 days before the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the keyword "Winter Olympic mascot" in Xiaohongshu Station was still searched more than "ice pier".
From a decision-making point of view, there is naturally no need to take the risk of hoarding a large number of ice pier toys or keychains and other products. And the lessons of the past are vividly displayed in Germany and London.
I just didn't expect that with the entry of large-scale foreign athletes and media reporters at the end of January, the cute panda image will be so useful in 2022, and it has once again become a hot spot for chasing and dissemination.
At present, the analysis of the outside world generally believes that Japanese journalist Tsujioka Yoshido is the source of this round of communication boom. In the video of the front and back of the Japanese television station that was widely circulated on the Internet, he showed the ice pier on the work card and highly recommended the ice pier to the Japanese audience.
After the ice pier was on fire, Tsujioka Yoshido also received the nickname of "Yoshidun" and was interviewed by media colleagues from all over the world at the Olympic Village and venues.
As other international athletes continued to praise the ice pier on social media platforms, everyone suddenly realized that the ice pier had become something that everyone loved.
In the Olympic Games with competition as the core, this is not an easy task.
Combined with the advent of the traditional Chinese New Year, the production capacity of the factory has decreased, and the ice piers that are understocked for various reasons will naturally appear to be in short supply or even out of stock. An Olympic service worker working in a closed loop told Sloth Bear Sports on Feb. 6 that "even in the division you need to queue up." And has been limited to purchase, there is no goods is not easy to say. ”
There has also been a new round of dissemination of "two innovations for the whole people" on social media. Netizens created the image of the ice pier through snowman, orange peel, embroidery and other ways, which accelerated the public's love for the ice pier and the desire to buy goods. Of course, the spread of memes and spoofs to the "second creation" also formed the spread of the virus, greatly enhancing the exposure of the ice pier.
Lazy Bear Sports interviewed Yulin Gui, head of a large toy production company in Dongguan, Guangdong, before the start of the 2018 World Cup. According to him, in the case of guaranteeing data and raw materials, if the production is quickly on demand, the 2-month production cycle can be shortened to 15 days.
Therefore, it is basically certain that with the resumption of factories and the realization of the commercial and promotional value of ice piers, both for foreign athletes who left China after the february 20th event, as well as for the general public, "one person, one pier" will soon become a reality.
4. Mascot vs virtual idol
In a way, the attention to the ice piers is in line with the boom of virtual idols on the Internet in the past two years Chinese.
Xinhua News Agency once described 2020 as the "first year of virtual idols" in the report. Not only because virtual idols are becoming more and more sought after by young two-dimensional groups, the capital market has also begun to pay more and more attention to this track.
In 2021, the "year of idol collapse", Shanghai Disneyland's Ling Na Belle and Universal Studios Beijing's Wei Zhentian, a new one and an old two major IPs have become the absolute top stream of the Chinese Internet, especially in the short video platform at different stages.
Ling Na Belle was jokingly called the "first female star" of Shanghai Chuansha.
An important external reason why the capital market is optimistic about virtual idols is that with the advancement of the "Qinglang Movement", the idol industry in the entertainment industry is facing higher pressure. The characteristics of virtual idols that are not easy to "collapse" make it a seemingly stable substitute.
But virtual idols are supported by stories created by "people", so it's hard to guarantee that it won't make mistakes in the spotlight, including the ice piers.
In a recent television interview, Ice Pier asked athletes questions directly "with their mouths open." Afterwards, everyone also knew that this violated the provisions of the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee on "not speaking and should be gender-neutral when using the image of ice piers and snow melting" when signing the agreement, and also exposed the unprofessionalism of the relevant units in their work.
From another level, the mascot of the competition is limited by the impact of the event cycle, and it is difficult to become a long-term explosive IP.
Li Hong, chairman of Hangzhou Fude Brand Management Co., Ltd., once told Lazy Bear Sports in 2018: Doing business around the competition is like selling mooncakes, the sales time is short and the explosion is large, the problem is not only to find a large number of producers for production, but also to seize the "window period" to make the products sell. Doing business around the club is like selling pie, although it can't be sold explosively, but it is more sustainable.
In fact, in the Super League and CBA, the only two top professional sports events in China, there are only a few mascot images that can impress fans. The fact that the ice pier has become a hot spot with the help of the world-class competition held locally is both a surprise and worthy of reflection. In addition to the above four angles, how the ice pier has quickly become a social currency, of course, there are more social psychological reasons behind this, and nowadays this popularity is said to be a kind of follow-up, a kind of hunger marketing, it has indeed become an exception in the sports mascot business.
For Professional Sports practitioners in China, it may be possible to follow the popularity of "one household and one pier" and the commercial trend of virtual idols to create mascots and upgrade stories. On the road of exploring professional sports revenue and building sports culture, it can also be regarded as an inspiration left by the ice pier to the industry.
Extended Reading: