In 200 days, the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics will open, and the Seine, which has witnessed the changing events of France, will be watched by sports people from all over the world for the third time in a century.
This will also be the 12th time since the founding of the People's Republic of China. The previous Olympic Games have demonstrated the strong competitive strength of the Chinese sports delegation, and now, in addition to the athletes, more organizations, communities and brands are quickly investing in all aspects of operation and marketing preparation.
Among them, the equipment used by the Chinese sports delegation on and off the field has long been an excellent commercial carrier recognized by the market. This time, for ANTA, the official partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee for nearly 16 years, they hope to find a valuable new incision that is in line with the current industry trend at the Olympic Games, which can show the strength and spirit of Chinese athletes.
On July 25, 2023, an Olympic overture with the theme of environmental protection was officially played. On this day of the one-year anniversary of the opening of the Paris Olympic Games, ANTA chose to launch an environmental protection campaign in collaboration with the Chinese Olympic Committee: participants went into the mountains to take every plastic bottle out of sight. Finally, for the first time, ANTA will use circular technology to create Olympic medal-winning equipment with full of environmental attributes.
This activity has a nice name called "Mountain and River Project". It helped ANTA complete an innovative and most thoughtful "environmental marketing" in 2023 - so that the efforts of an ordinary person will finally be reflected on the Olympic podium.
How to compose the Olympic overture with "green".
In the past two years, China's outdoor industry has been on the rise, and even in 2023, when the market environment is sluggish, the range of young outdoor enthusiasts has expanded, and the mountains have become a "utopia" for many office workers. However, with the increasing number of participants in outdoor sports, the environmental problems caused by the process have also become more serious, and outdoor garbage such as plastic bottles is scattered among the mountains.
In general, the urban environmental management and garbage disposal system is relatively perfect, while the garbage scattered between mountains and rivers during outdoor sports is relatively difficult to be properly disposed of. Based on this, ANTA and the Chinese Olympic Committee have found an ingenious point of convergence to advocate mobilizing thousands of outdoor enthusiasts to properly dispose of the waste generated outdoors starting from themselves.
ANTA is seriously doing the right thing. The reason why the "Shanhe Plan" can be connected with the Olympic Games is precisely because it is in line with the Chinese Olympic Committee's adherence to the "green development" proposition for many years. As early as the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the concept of "green Olympics" was proposed by the Chinese Olympic Committee. In the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, in order to get out of the "casino" of the global climate crisis, the Chinese Olympic Committee still puts green energy conservation and low-carbon environmental protection at the forefront.
Therefore, in the "Shanhe Plan", ANTA has accordingly taken out the brand's core sports resources and marketing investment to spread and influence more ordinary people to participate in the "Green Olympics".
On the day of the start of the "Mountains and Rivers Project", ANTA set the Qinling Mountains, known as the "Dragon Vein of China", as the starting point, and many athletes unloaded their Olympic champions and walked into the Qinling Mountains to take away any foreign objects that did not belong to the mountains and forests.
Half a year later, the "Mountains and Rivers Project" has also been extended to all parts of China. ANTA has carried out eco-friendly hiking activities in five major areas across the country, including "East, West, South, North and Central", and has so far traveled along the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi, Daocheng in Sichuan, along the Great Wall in Beijing, as well as 14 cities including Shanghai, Nanjing, Changsha, Zhengzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Dongying and Shantou.
In the process, ANTA's philosophy and actions have been recognized and supported by more people, and at the same time, ANTA has been able to integrate into the Olympic Games with a more special and meaningful posture.
From the countdown year to the 200th day, the "Shanhe Project" has achieved phased success, but it is far from reaching the end. For brands, a single plan will come to an end, but it is a long road to environmental protection and sustainability.
The combination behind eco-friendly marketing
In 2020, China put forward the "dual carbon" goal of "peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060", and the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that "promoting green and low-carbon economic and social development is the key to achieving high-quality development".
There are many ways to respond to the call of the country, and there are many stories about environmental protection, most of which are mainly based on "exaggerating the harm caused by environmental protection". However, Anta's choice this time is special and the most pragmatic.
"It is better to teach people to fish than to teach them to fish", Anta personally told the whole society: go into the mountains and forests, take away garbage, and do not litter. Ordinary people doing these things well is really practicing environmental protection. The brand also aroused the awareness and attention of the whole society to environmental protection through a large-scale "environmental marketing" campaign. At this level, such a move has nothing to do with business, and Anta also admits that the original intention of the "Shanhe Project" is not to "sell goods", but to find a purer way to communicate with today's consumers, and to put environmental awareness into practice with more people.
Looking back at this juncture, the "Shanhe Plan" is only a consistent continuation of ANTA's philosophy and attitude in the field of environmental protection. As a leading sportswear group in China, it has become ANTA's mission to practice ESG from multiple dimensions. In the process of enterprise operation, ANTA has taken practical actions in terms of raw materials, packaging materials, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Specifically, ANTA continues to explore the diversity of sustainable raw materials, and different products are equipped with different environmental technology platforms, such as EcoCosy, CELYS and TENCEL, which are biodegradable fibers, while Sorona is bio-based, and the above materials have been used in products on a large scale. On the road to achieving sustainable development, ANTA has also found its own product environmental protection technology matrix, which is divided into three aspects: environmental protection materials, environmental protection and public welfare and environmental protection processes.
The beneficiaries of these technologies are not limited to Olympians, but also to ordinary consumers. On the one hand, ANTA responds to the country's call for carbon neutrality, and on the other hand, by providing consumers with comfortable, practical and more cost-effective sustainable products, so that more users can pay attention to the harmonious coexistence of man and nature in their use.
This time, ANTA has demonstrated the brand's long-term efforts in environmental protection with the "Shanhe Project" as the axis, and with the cooperation with the Chinese Olympic Committee, the "Shanhe Project" has not only stopped at the marketing level, but also told the public that environmental protection is a real blessing, which can more fully demonstrate the brand's sense of social responsibility.
First the practitioner, then the leader
ANTA was able to launch the "Mountains and Rivers Project" not only because of the concept that the brand wants to express, but more importantly, ANTA has been on the road of sustainable development for 8 years.
Over the past 8 years, ANTA has been publishing ESG reports, from employee management to corporate interpretation, to corporate technological innovation and control of raw materials, and has been looking for every opportunity to implement them in the process.
ANTA plans to achieve the Group's overall goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, and at the same time, by 2030, achieve five 50% - 50% of its products use sustainable packaging, increase sustainable products to 50%, use 50% of sustainable materials, replace 50% of the energy consumption of strategic partners with renewable energy, and replace 50% of the energy consumption of its own transportation equipment with clean energy.
At present, ANTA has built a complete ESG strategy implementation system, forming a complete closed-loop ESG practice management from strategy, goals, organization, resources, performance and culture, and has achieved zero waste to landfill in its own production process and the transformation of its energy structure to a clean one, especially the "green" supply chain.
At present, ANTA has more than 3,000 supply chain partners, involving 300,000 employees, and has invested RMB 3 billion in technology research and development, ranking first among all Chinese sports brands. The only national sports science laboratory in China is also owned by ANTA. More importantly, the 11 R&D centers, 4 material innovation and research centers and 1 sole technology research institute established in recent years represent ANTA's increased innovation in the fields of shoe soles, synthetic leather and fabrics.
In the next decade, ANTA will further drive energy conservation, emission reduction and technological innovation among its industry chain partners, and make joint progress in scientific research and innovation, environmental sustainability, digital transformation and corporate governance.
At this time, when ordinary people buy Anta's products, they also join the "army" of environmental protection in a sense.
However, if you want to do a good job in ESG, it is by no means a simple matter, and at the same time, the high cost will not see the return in the short term. Companies will inevitably encounter challenges when doing ESG, and ESG is not something that a single company can accomplish on its own. Therefore, for the Chinese market, in addition to ANTA's own efforts, the "Shanhe Plan" also provides a marketing idea for other individuals and enterprises in the market to emulate.
When Anta has already done this, it may only be a matter of time before more companies "roll up", which not only meets the market demand, but also satisfies the focus of consumers today, and allows ordinary people to skillfully participate in the highest stage of the Olympic Games. It is another Olympic year, and the "Green Olympics" and sustainable hosting of the Games also need to be mentioned again, and there is no doubt that Anta has done something to push the boat forward.
Returning to ANTA itself, the brand's strategy and attitude can also be observed from the "Shanhe Plan": sustainable development has always run through the brand's growth process, and its inner spirit has become the strength and original aspiration that ANTA must adhere to. In the field of environmental protection and sustainable development, ANTA has completed a small step from 1 to 10 and is looking forward to moving from 10 to a higher level.
An Olympic cycle is only four years, but ANTA's "Mountains and Rivers Plan" may carry the mission of countless four years in the future. The prelude to the Olympics has begun, and for brands, consumers, and society as a whole, this track may never end. And Anta is also acting in this way.
Disclaimer: This article was originally written by Lazy Bear Sports, please indicate the source for reprinting.