With just over 200 days to go before the Paris Olympics, ANTA announced that Qin Haiyang, the "World Frog King", has joined the ANTA family as a brand spokesperson. This means that the "equipment column" and "arsenal" of ANTA's Paris Olympics marketing campaign have been exponentially strengthened.
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Text / Hajime Soda
Editor / Guo Yang
"You two are here to buy the goods, right?!"
The Chinese swimming team is on the hot search again. In the just-concluded 2023 National Swimming Championships, Zhang Yufei and Qin Haiyang opened the gold medal "purchase" mode, Zhang Yufei made a strong attack to win the hardware, and Qin Haiyang won all the gold medals in breaststroke. This hot search is full of love from netizens, and it also shows the strong influence of Zhang Yufei and Qin Haiyang.
A few days ago, ANTA officially announced that Qin Haiyang, the "World Frog King", had joined the ANTA family as the brand spokesperson. With just over 200 days left before the Paris Olympics, ANTA signed a contract with Qin Haiyang at this time, and used China's new generation of sports leaders to exponentially strengthen the "equipment bar" and "arsenal" of its Paris Olympic campaign.
The choice of spokesperson often shows the direction of the brand. Combing through Anta's series of spokesperson signings in recent years, we see a clear vein of developing professional sports.
Qin Haiyang, what can it bring?
Qin Haiyang, a young man who is rapidly rising in 2023, is becoming a symbol in the Chinese sports world.
At the World Championships in Fukuoka in July this year, Qin Haiyang became the first player in history to win all the gold medals in the men's 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke at the World Championships, and broke the world record in the 200m breaststroke, which not only wrote a new history unprecedented in the world swimming world, but also filled the gap in China's breaststroke event for 66 years.
At the Hangzhou Asian Games in September, Qin Haiyang continued to fire on his firepower, once again winning the gold medals in the men's 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke events, and won the men's 4x100m medley and the men's and women's mixed 4x100m medley relay championship - participated in 6 events and won 5 gold medals and 1 silver medal.
"Who doesn't know Qin Haiyang" is becoming a reality.
This is evidenced by a series of accolades – Qin Haiyang and Zhang Yufei were jointly named the "Most Valuable Athlete" at the Hangzhou Asian Games, Qin Haiyang was named the "FINA Best Male Swimmer of the Year 2023" at the FINA World Sports Awards 2023, and Qin Haiyang was the only Chinese male athlete shortlisted at the 2024 Laureus World Sports Awards......
Who will lead the Chinese sports scene? This answer is about to come out.
As the flag bearer of the Chinese delegation to the Hangzhou Asian Games, Qin Haiyang is growing into a new leader in Chinese sports. The "summit meeting" with the leading company Anta has also become a matter of course.
From the perspective of ANTA's development strategy of "professionalism and brand improvement", Qin Haiyang is also an inevitable choice.
Swimming, with the title of "King of Sports", is the mainstream of the world sports competitions, and the international competition is fierce, and the overall strength of the Chinese swimming team is outstanding. ANTA's victory as the male and female leaders of the swimming team in one fell swoop will undoubtedly strengthen the professional sports label and consolidate the professional brand image.
At the same time, in this era of social media, where "the smell of wine is also afraid of deep alleys", the advantages of professional sports need to be focused and demonstrated through social attention. With a handsome and beautiful sunny image, swimmers most directly convey the beauty of sports and body aesthetics, which are deeply loved and concerned by young people, and are almost a walking "traffic generator" - top swimmers can often gain national influence under the eyeball effect of the competition.
Looking forward to the 2024 Paris Olympics, Anta has signed a contract with Qin Haiyang to "draw a good line" for sports fans. Taking advantage of the economic dividends of the competition and building a bridge between the brand and consumers, the spokesperson signed a contract to outline a brand portrait about professional sports.
What should be valued as a signed spokesperson?
"Meeting at the top" with athletes may be achieved with "money ability", but wanting to "take shares" early and lock in the commercial explosion of athletes at an early stage is the most coveted thing for every brand.
At the end of 2019, Anta paid attention to Gu Ailing, who had not yet exploded, and signed an early contract to lock in value, which made the follow-up Beijing Winter Olympics a good story of wearing a "dragon pattern". And Zhang Yufei, who shined this year, was also recruited early and grew up with it.
Now that Qin Haiyang has been snatched again, it is undoubtedly a vivid interpretation of ANTA's professional vision. This kind of story of continuous attention and reputation with the spokesperson during the contest is undoubtedly what any brand expects.
Gu Ailing's dragon pattern back at that time realized the screen out of the circle
Looking back at ANTA's sports spokespersons in the past decade from today's perspective, it is not difficult to find commonalities – first of all, Olympic champions, representing their professional level in the vertical field, but more importantly, their "popular" influence.
In 2013, Anta signed Zou Shiming to help the latter enter the international professional boxing scene, and outside the arena, his variety show performance and happy life are also quite out of the circle; Xu Mengtao finally realized her dream of four Olympic battles, and showed her tenacious side with a domineering roar after the game, and the cheerful personality of the follow-up "Sister Lang" has countless fans......
The "massive" type spokesperson for all categories is the embodiment of the personification of the brand. In a sense, ANTA's chosen spokesperson can represent the mental outlook and personality of Chinese athletes at a certain level, and exert a positive influence on the widest range of Chinese people. Such a signing decision should not only take into account professional sports performance and field prediction, but also take into account their growth experience, personality and charm.
Looking at Zhang Yufei and Qin Haiyang by such standards, their absolute strength, people-friendly personality and personal image that have been training hard and hard are undoubtedly very compatible with Anta.
In addition to the brand spokesperson matrix, to explore ANTA's spokesperson in the vertical category, we have to mention this year's big event - Kyrie Irving. The latter became its basketball spokesperson and chief creative officer, creating his own logo and creating an exclusive product line.
Owen itself has its own topicality, coupled with a gorgeous style of play and a unique sense of trend, which makes the cooperation with Anta outstanding. Recently, Owen's personal PE version of the Crazy 5 Pro has triggered a queue to buy as soon as it is on the market.
Not to mention, the story of ANTA and Klay Thompson's mutual achievement has been written for 10 years, and now the KT series sneakers have been released in their ninth generation, and have long become a classic of "closed-eyes choice" in the hearts of fans. In recent years, ANTA has continued to improve its star matrix, witnessed Hayward come out of the trough and returned to the top, and signed rookie players such as DiVincenzodi to achieve continuous penetration in the NBA.
It can be said that NBA stars have become the supreme weapon of ANTA Basketball to show its "professionalism", and under the tip of its basketball marketing pyramid, ANTA has also become the official partner of the China 3x3 Basketball Super League. Through the layout of top stars and professional leagues, while the brand is enhanced, the product strength can be continuously polished, and on this basis, it will continue to radiate more young people through grassroots competitions and campus marketing.
Every once in a while, videos of Owen training one-on-one with the players of the national youth team in his early years will be hyped up again. As the video shows, every time Irving comes into contact with China, he sincerely helps Chinese basketball players grow. NBA star Irving has a world-class influence, he is not only a bridge for dialogue between world basketball and China, but also an important step for ANTA to influence the U.S. market and move towards internationalization.
Perhaps, ANTA's sea of stars is not only "China's Nike", but "the world's ANTA".
Because of Owen, we feel that ANTA will make great efforts in basketball in 2023, and the running category, which is equally important to ANTA, has also clarified its structure after the "confusion period".
In October this year, ANTA signed Kenenissa Bekele, the "King of Long-distance Running", not only aiming at his influence, but also focusing on a series of in-depth cooperation such as ANTA Running Africa's "Plateau C Plan", with the intention of improving the overall level of China's long-distance running program. In addition, ANTA has signed contracts with international athletes such as Kipchuba, and has also worked closely with domestic track and field teams such as Yunnan, Tibet, and Guizhou to achieve coverage at the elite level.
In addition, we also note that ANTA has become the title sponsor of the "HK100", which is known as "China's most influential off-road race". As the main battlefield and big stage of the top sports equipment, "Hong Kong Bai" has always been a battleground for professional brands. Winning the "Hong Kong 100" is expected to help ANTA start from professionalism and penetrate and radiate a broader running scene.
It can be seen that in the process of signing and cooperating with ANTA spokespersons, they often continue to strengthen the imprint of brand professionalism and generate a more lasting circle memory, from point to surface, from spokesperson to elite to the public level, and continue to radiate and extend to more scenes and consumer groups.
Sports brands "slow down", where is the next curve?
2023 is approaching the end of the year, looking back at the performance of domestic sports brands this year, an obvious trend is that the sports consumer market is gradually becoming "slowing down".
The reason is that the era of rapid growth of sports brands is coming to an end, and the future market competition is biased towards the stock market, and the competition will be more intense, and even new competitors will continue to emerge in each segment. In addition, the consumer market is showing a K-shaped differentiation trend, and sports domestic products are facing the test of market differentiation, which requires brands to continue to consolidate and develop their own advantages.
At this time, always insisting on "professional sports" is undoubtedly the best moat for the brand.
Professionalism, segmentation, and individuality are indeed becoming the key points that consumers pay more attention to, but the "first principles" of sports brands are still returning to the essence of sports brands. Professionalism is the best interpretation of "long-termism" in the field of sports.
Since surpassing the international brands in its financial performance last year, ANTA is embarking on a new long march in different professional sports fields by relying on its professional sports and technological strength, which means that ANTA is giving way to the pursuit of growth speed and the emphasis on quality and growth, and "making ANTA smaller and smaller".
The signing of spokespersons such as Qin Haiyang is the external display of his professional sports, and his internal strength is his unremitting investment in research and development. With an annual R&D and innovation fund of more than 1 billion yuan, cooperation with many of the world's top universities, scientific research institutions and designers, and more than 3,000 cumulative patent applications, ANTA's product professionalism lies in the confidence.
The Year of Sports 2024 is about to begin, and the pursuit of sports stars will never stop. From Gu Ailing and Wu Dajing to Qin Haiyang and Zhang Yufei, as well as Thompson, Owen and even Bekele and Kipchuba, the "equipment bar" and "arsenal" of top athletes themselves represent a kind of mass vane and have an irreplaceable driving role.
In the process of thousands of sports people keeping up with sports stars, sports brands should infiltrate the brand culture into the daily sports life of more people through the professional strength and sportsmanship of athletes, and converge into a great river of national sports.