Wen / Yan Bin
Edited by / Guo Yang
In January 1967, the first Olympic mascot was born.
The mascot named Shus is a big-headed puppet with a ski-footed body in the shape of lightning, the head is printed with five Olympic rings, and the main color is the red, blue and white flag of the French flag of the host country of the Olympic Games.
Two years after Shuss' appearance, the dachshund Valdi was designed at a Christmas party, the first officially recognized mascot in Olympic history.
Shuss and Vardy – early Olympic mascots
Over the past few decades, countless classic and cute mascots have been published one after another, and have been popular with many fans, which have been bound to the Olympic culture and become an important symbol of the Olympic Games.
Even so, Shuss designer Alain Lafargue must not have thought that in China 55 years later, in the cycle of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the mascot ice pier will become the hottest commodity in all of China and even the world, offline franchise stores, on e-commerce platforms, in the Olympic Village, the world is "difficult to find".
01
The double Olympics officially ended, did you buy the ice pier?
On March 13, Beijing Bird's Nest, the 37-day Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games finally came to an end at the Bird's Nest, the Chinese legion achieved 27 gold, 24 silver and 25 bronze medals a total of 76 medals of excellent results, and during the Winter Olympics, people's enthusiasm for participating in ice and snow sports, the attention to the new generation of athletes from achievements to all-round quality, and the Olympic atmosphere on sports consumption, have become a valuable wealth brought to China by the Olympic Games.
Of course, no matter how long it takes to look back at this Winter Olympics, a mascot has become a consumer explosive - "ice pier heat", which must be a hot topic that cannot be bypassed.
The official flagship store of Olympic Tmall, hot sales around the ice pier
Since the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, it is almost common for the Olympic concession retail outlets to sell out and queue up, and these retail outlets are often concentrated in Beijing and Hebei, and the Internet has become an important channel for more consumers to snap up the ice piers.
On January 19, 2017, Alibaba joined the Olympic TOP sponsorship program and became the official partner of cloud services and e-commerce platform services, and on December 15, one year later, the first official e-commerce flagship store in the history of the modern Olympic Games was born on Tmall.
Sitting on the exclusive core asset of IOC's only e-commerce platform, it does a good job for Tmall during the Olympic Games, such as meeting the purchase needs of consumers in the first time, serving the Olympic sponsor brand, undertaking the hot spots of the stadium, and finally conveying the brand mentality of "Tmall buying customized models for the Winter Olympics", which is a cornerstone-like preparation.
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It is reported that during the Beijing Winter Olympics, Tmall licensed goods searched more than 200 million times, multiple replenishments are quickly sold out, and in preparation for the closing ceremony of the Beijing Winter Paralympic Games on March 13, tmall Olympic flagship store prepared a total of more than 3.5 million pieces of plush toys, handmade, keychains, blind boxes and other licensed goods, giving a perfect end to the "hard to find" Beijing Winter Olympics.
According to Tmall's official data, as of March 12, Beijing time, the number of fans of the Tmall Olympic official flagship store has reached 4.464 million, and on February 5, the day after the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, more than 5 million people poured into the olympic official flagship store. On February 6, that number exceeded 10 million.
From a larger consumption dimension, the fiery Winter Olympics have also led to a surge in ice and snow consumption, according to Alibaba released the "Tiger Year Spring Festival Consumption Trend Report", from the Chinese New Year's Eve to the fourth day of the first month, Tmall ski equipment increased by more than 180% year-on-year, and the ice sports category increased by more than 300% year-on-year.
Excerpt from the "Spring Festival Consumption Trend Report in the Year of the Tiger"
02
More than just selling goods,
How to refine the "Brand's Preferred Olympic Marketing Position"?
Infected by the fiery Atmosphere of the Winter Olympics, it is not only the ice piers that have exploded.
We have noticed that in the Beijing Winter Olympic cycle, Tmall and a number of Olympic-related brands have carried out long-term cooperation around the Winter Olympics and ice and snow sports, from the offline events of the Tmall Ice and Snow Festival in January to the opening ceremony, the end of the double Olympic Games and other important time nodes to create online marketing venues, Tmall gathered its strength to empower the brand, and harvested the effect of double harvest of word of mouth and sales.
At the beginning of 2022, at the ice and snow festival created by Tmall for 5 consecutive years, Tmall joined hands with more than 20 ski-related brand merchants to upgrade the user experience of offline ski resorts through full-link transformation: Procter & Gamble Snow Field Extreme Guardian Package provides comprehensive protection for ski enthusiasts, Yili, Samsung and other brands provide energy supply and physical support, and ANTA and many of its sub-brands participate in the new product show and showroom trend equipment room... The Tmall Ice and Snow Festival in the Olympic year took the lead in seizing the minds of consumers in ice and snow sports, realizing the interconnection from offline scenes to online shopping. ‘’
On January 8, Samsung, the "old player" who has joined the Olympic TOP program since 1997, joined hands with Tmall to create a Winter Olympic Star Party in Shanghai Global Harbor, which lasted for a week and invited the Winter Olympic Short Track Speed Skating Four Gold Medal winner Wang Mao, a number of trend stars, and launched the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G Olympic Commemorative Edition folding screen mobile phone specially launched for Chinese consumers, becoming a punching mecca for consumers. It is worth mentioning that on the opening day of the Winter Olympics, the mobile phone of the Samsung Olympic commemorative edition was sold out on Tmall.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G Olympic Commemorative Edition
In the Winter Olympics period, the popularity of related brands on Tmall is even higher, and encouraged by Gu Ailing's victory, the sales of the same series of products in Anta Valley Ailing have surged instantly. Anta Tmall flagship store specially launched the "Gu Ailing Same Style" area, including Gu Ailing's same coat, ski wear, down jacket, training shoes, prize shoes, etc., the panda hat she wore when she received the award and the unique dragon pattern "Ai Ling Dragon Tee" have become popular items.
The data shows that ANTA Group has benefited significantly during the Winter Olympics. The official flagship store of Taobao, a brand under its brand, reached sales of 104 million yuan from February 4 to 18 (during the Beijing Winter Olympics), an increase of 29% from january 20 to February 3 (the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics) of 80.49 million yuan.
There are many more cases of Tmall's linkage with brands. For example, as the official sponsor of the Winter Olympics, Yanjing Beer customized the "Winter Olympic Ice and Snow Tank" for the Beijing Winter Olympics, which became a popular Winter Olympic custom product on Tmall and quickly sold out; the official dairy partner Yili created the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics limited packaging products, with the popularity of Olympic elements such as ice piers, Yili pure milk Winter Olympic special models were also popular on Tmall and quickly sold out; as an Olympic sponsor and partner for many years, P&G's many brands and products also played tricks on Tmall. For example, P&G's grand launch of the Gillette Winter Olympic gravity box, sales soared, occupying the top 1 of the manual shaving class.
It is not difficult to see that in addition to its own identity advantages as the only official e-commerce platform of IOC and the advantages of Tmall's original service consumers, Tmall also gives full play to the advantages of platform resources, constantly links the Local Olympics and even top-level sponsors, and creates an exclusive marketing venue for the brand at important time nodes of the Olympic Games, providing a set of systematic solutions from products to events and marketing.
After the double Olympic battle, Tmall, which empowers the brand, has become the "brand's preferred Olympic marketing position".
03
From the Winter Olympics to the Asian Games,
"Buy the same kind of Tmall for the event" to seize the user's mind
After the Tokyo Olympics, Beijing Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympic Games, the enthusiasm of the people for sports consumption will further rise, and the further development of the sports industry is worth looking forward to.
As the 2022 super sports year, after the end of the Winter Olympics, we will usher in the local high-level competition - Hangzhou Asian Games, Krypton learned that Tmall, which continues to lay out sports tracks, as the official e-commerce platform of the Asian Games, will also take "buying the same style of Tmall as the core playing method" to continue the experience of the Double Olympic Games to the Asian Games, and work with more brands to create event marketing results. At that time, the order of the Asian Games mascot in the official flagship store of Tmall at the Hangzhou Asian Games may become a trend again.
The official flag of the Hangzhou Asian Games was launched during the 200-day countdown event
Looking back at the just-concluded Beijing Winter Olympics, from the popularity of "one pier is difficult to find" to the final e-commerce to help "one household and one pier", buying the same model of the competition may become a highlight of future sports consumption, which is also the report card handed over by Tmall after five years of cooperation with the Olympic Games.
According to Kryptonian Think Tank, for the vast majority of Chinese local sports events, advertising sponsorship revenue accounts for 70-80% of their total revenue, while the proportion of such as event broadcasting, ticket sales and derivatives is extremely small. Therefore, how to find a growth point other than advertising sponsorship has also become an important proposition for a large number of sports events to break through the growth bottleneck.
Under this proposition, Tmall, which relies on the Ali e-commerce system and has the successful experience of the Double Olympic Games, is closer to a "middle office" that serves the marketing system of the entire sports competition, absorbs demand externally, realizes multi-party synergy of resources, traffic and products internally, and ultimately helps the sports competition to break through the diversification of income, enhance influence, and further penetrate the big goal of "buying the same tmall" cognition.
Whether it is the promotion of sports events and their derivatives, or the cooperation of the official brand sponsors of the events, from the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics to the Hangzhou Asian Games, Tmall, which continues to lay out, will play the role of providing event marketing solutions for the sports industry, and this sports story about e-commerce will also bring us more surprises.