Text / Hajime Soda
Edited by Qi Yawen
For Chinese, the Olympic Games are like a resonance that originates from everyone's heart, and eventually has a special emotion.
In 1908, when China was continuously absent from the Olympic Games, "Tianjin Youth" used the "Olympic Three Questions" to let the Chinese's Olympic dream take root from then on, but the gap between dreams and reality was always so big. In 1932, Liu Changchun overcame all difficulties and represented China in the 10th Olympic Games in Los Angeles for the first time. When the team entered the venue, the commentator said that this was a representative team of a country with a large population, and the audience laughed. And Liu Changchun, who bears the expectations of the whole country and the people, can only be silent.
Fifty-two years later, the Chinese Olympic delegation traveled to Los Angeles again. On the first day of the competition, Xu Haifeng raised his gun and shot down the first gold medal of the Olympic Games. That day coincided with the same month and day that Liu Changchun arrived in Los Angeles.
From one person to a group of people, from a gold medal to countless stars, the Chinese have spent 100 years to complete the three Olympic questions, proving to the world that they belong to Chinese athletes. At the end of 2023, as one of the enterprises that have accompanied the development of China's sports industry for the longest time and the longest time, Yili released a short video, using love and companionship to let the connotation of the Olympic Games penetrate beyond the event and bring the inspiring power of time and space.
See you in Paris in 2024
The outgoing year 2023 is destined to be an extraordinary year for the world of sports.
From Argentina's Messi coming to China to ignite the enthusiasm of fans across the country, to the Chengdu Universiade and Hangzhou Asian Games running through the midsummer and golden autumn, to the China Open, ATP Shanghai Masters, Short Track Speed Skating World Cup and a series of international events to gather and return, this year, not only the face of Chinese sports has become more and more colorful, but also sports events have set off round after round of national enthusiasm.
Looking forward to 2024, the official announcement of Messi and Ronaldo's trip to China will not only continue the domestic sports atmosphere, but also lay the foundation for this year with many world-class sports events such as the Asian Cup, the European Cup, and the Olympic Games.
Among the many events, the return to Paris after 100 years also happens to be the 40th anniversary of the return of the Chinese Olympic delegation to the Olympic Games. The Paris Olympics will undoubtedly become a huge gathering place for crowds and sports fans.
At the end of 2023, Yili released "2024, See You in Paris", which carries the memories of several national groups from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and has become the first shot to look forward to the 2024 and Paris Olympic Games.
The video, which is just over two minutes long, interprets Yili's four growth perceptions of accompanying China's sports industry and the Olympic Games. The first is the growth of the times, from the moment when Yili became attached to Chinese sports in 2005 to every moment that ignited the pride of the Chinese people since then, from taking off the hat of "the sick man of East Asia" to becoming a sports powerhouse, from showing himself to others, to attracting visitors from all over the world. China's Olympic Games are endless, and Chinese sports have also performed their own eventful years.
In fact, Yili's expansion of the connotation of the Olympic Games is never limited to a single expression, and the Olympic Games have already become one of Yili's important brand assets and one of the main bridges to connect with consumers.
From the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics' impressive "Beijing Ninth Minute" at the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics under the name of "Preparation", to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which paid tribute to the "Accumulation Generation" full of the attributes of the times, and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics "Fight is to shine", Yili has always been pushing the Olympic connotation to expand to a new dimension and arouse the resonance of the whole people.
The third is human growth, in the video, Yili benchmarks the young sports teenagers with the long-established Olympic athletes, symbolizing that every child is also a person with light, they have budding dreams, constantly accumulating ability, bravely chasing, and one day they can win the gold medal of their dreams.
The last is the growth of the past year, standing at the tail end of 2023, the rivers of an era, a career, and a generation of dreams converge here, so that this is like the usual farewell to the old and welcome the new, adding the solemnity and enthusiasm of connecting the past and the next and going on another journey.
"Growth" has brought Yili to the same frequency as the sportsmanship represented by the Olympic Games.
In addition, Yili wants to use this video to convey to the audience the wishes for the New Year at the end of the year and the beginning of the year. I hope that everyone can think about where they will go, and call on more people to pursue excellence together with the Olympic Games. It is also in such a scene that the common pursuit of Yili and the Olympics to break through the limits and surpass themselves has aroused ripples in the hearts of every audience, and in the resonance of the three parties, the Olympics and Yili have once again been firmly bound.
And this resonance has been going on for many years in the past.
Erie dances with the Olympics
Back in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Yili began his first collision with the Olympics. The torch ice cream launched by Yili, with its image that perfectly fits the Olympic torch, has become a popular product at that time, and has also become a mark of the 30-year golden age of China's dairy industry.
The story that follows takes place in 2005. On November 16 of that year, Yili officially announced that it had become the dairy sponsor of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. It has also launched a series of activities such as "Yili Olympic Healthy China Tour" and "Strong China with Me", which have visited more than 660 cities and more than 2,000 communities across the country, attracting more than 300,000 netizens to participate, promoting the trend of "Olympic Games for All" and bringing the trickle-down changes brought by the Beijing Olympics to every ordinary person.
This has also become the core element of Yili's follow-up Olympic marketing actions: it has set its sights on the general public, conveyed the Olympic spirit and displayed the concept of health has become the main axis, and Yili's accompaniment to the Olympics and the public has become a tacit agreement.
So far, Yili has also become the first and only "Double Olympic Enterprise" in China to serve both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, decorating the sparkle of Beijing, the "City of the Double Olympic Games", with Olympic quality.
In addition to dancing with the Olympic Games, Yili has also made positive and optimistic values such as healthy life and Olympic hard work a part of the social trend. The Olympic standard has become the best representative of Yili's quality, and health, breakthrough, quality, and honor ...... These parts of the Olympic Games that have attracted the most attention from the public have firmly entered the minds of the public with the long-distance running that has accompanied them again and again in the brand resonance of Yili.
An Olympic long-distance run towards the minds of the masses
Holding hands with the Olympic Games for many years, Yili has continuously helped the Olympic Games to be promoted in China, conveying the Olympic spirit represented in the Olympic flame. For brands, this is not only in marketing, but also in terms of brand image, quality and innovation.
That year, Liu Changchun went to a foreign country to participate in the Olympic Games single-handedly, but he lacked food and clothing and finally lost the competition. In his diary, he wrote down his lifelong regrets: if he had arrived a week earlier, resumed normal training, and had eaten and dressed as usual, maybe everything would have been different.
Eighty years later, at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Yili not only became the only company in China that met the Olympic standards and provided dairy products for the Olympic Games, but also provided nutritional security for 16,000 athletes, coaches and team officials from more than 200 countries and regions around the world. Starting from the Beijing Olympic Games, Yili has supported the long-term training and preparation of nearly 40 Summer and Winter Olympic teams, and provided a steady stream of nutritional assistance for tens of thousands of Chinese Olympic athletes. Yili, which has grown together with the Olympics and Chinese sports, has also grown from a dairy processing plant to a Chinese dairy enterprise that ranks first in Asia's dairy industry all year round in the ranking released by Rabobank.
It is precisely because of this long-term insistence on accompanying the growth of Chinese sports that people have long been Xi to connecting the Olympic Games through Yili. Just as we are saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, in the face of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, people will instinctively choose to go to the Olympics through Yili again.
Such a bridge role can almost be called one of the annotations of Yili's multi-year Olympic journey. Because the source of everything is the unique love for sports, the firm love for hard work, the upward love for life, and the surging love for life that originated from Yili's insight into the Chinese people.
Looking at Paris, Yili's association with the Olympics and Chinese sports has already completed a strong anchor in the hearts of consumers. However, Yili still continues to grasp the emotional resonance of social value, so that the brand can truly go to the hearts of consumers, just like the accompaniment of the Olympic Games and Chinese sports in the past many years, which is the best accumulation of time to verify the brand, and it is a brand barrier that cannot be replaced by traffic play.
As early as when China's Olympic career was just starting, Yili had enough courage and self-confidence to anchor the long-term and make a detailed layout around the Olympic Games. This is the victory of strategic consciousness and the embodiment of Yili's long-term spirit. Over the years, Yili has grown together with the Olympic Games, and has continuously internalized the Olympic Games as the cultural engine of the brand, so that it has today's brand confidence and shining moments.
Today, Yili has become a "No. 1 dairy company in Asia and one of the top five in the world" in China, keeping up with the development of the times at any time and playing the mission of a major enterprise in a broader field. "China Yili, grow together with Chinese sports", just like the sentence in "2024, See You in Paris", work hard and move forward bravely, and Yili will continue to accompany Chinese athletes to shine in the Olympic arena at the Paris Olympics next year.