Orchestration | Riyao
Audit | Riyao
Author | Hiu
Source | Internet Brand Officer
01
Unexpectedly, after the cold winter (Spring Festival), the national sports brand Li Ning quickly ushered in an eventful autumn.
Recently, Li Ning, which has a market value of 210 billion yuan, has announced that it will be privatized and delisted, which may be a good way for capital to break the embarrassing situation of Li Ning's stock price falling endlessly.
The other news is much more negative, and it is also a microcosm of Li Ning's market value that has gone straight to the bottom like a roller coaster.
Last month, the original IP rich flower posted a post on Xiaohongshu questioning Li Ning's alleged infringement and plagiarism, and attached a series of screenshots to support it.
图源：小红书@RICH FLOWER
According to the "Internet Brand Officer", RICH FLOWER is an original IP brand founded in August 2022 with registered trademarks and copyright registration. It uses REMIX flowers and coins as visual symbols, and "I wish you money to spend every day" as its cultural language.
The suspected plagiarism of #Li Ning Journey Bang Bang Bang Shoes# is a shoe item released in early March, when Li Ning officially released relevant graphic publicity on multiple social platforms.
Li Ning is very "daring" and "trouble-free", and the title of the article directly uses the brand concept of "I wish you money to spend every day".
Source: Little Red Book
If this sentence is very commonplace, and it is normal if there are similarities, then the more you look down, the more wrong things become.
From the product detail page to the design elements used in the product body, it cannot be said that the similarity is extremely high, but it can only be said that it is exactly the same.
Source: Little Red Book
In the e-commerce platform Li Ning flagship store, the name of the product is also directly attached to the brand name of "money to spend", and I don't know that I think it is a new joint model launched by these two brands.
Source: Taobao
If we want to talk about the popularity of the two brands, Li Ning and Youqian Hua RICH FLOWER, I believe that the conclusion must be that everyone knows about the former, and the latter is little known.
This is an action by those who have a weak voice to protect their legitimate rights and interests from those who have a strong voice.
ONLY ACCORDING TO THE "EVIDENCE" DISCLOSED BY RICH FLOWER, LI NING IS INDEED THE PARTY THAT LOSES, AND MANY NETIZENS HAVE EXPRESSED THEIR SUPPORT FOR ORIGINALITY AND SUPPORT COPYRIGHT HOLDERS TO SPEND MONEY TO DEFEND THEIR RIGHTS.
It's just that up to now, I haven't been able to wait for a positive response from Li Ning's official, but have all the related products and promotional materials been removed from the shelves, and now "there is no such shoe".
And the rich flower side also deleted the post.,I don't know if the two sides negotiated it privately.,Or for some other reason.。
02
This is not the first time that Li Ning has "fallen" in product design.
As the pride of domestic products in the past, Li Ning took advantage of the "national tide" to harvest the heat, but also caused many controversial incidents, and even suffered from public opinion.
The most sensational thing is that at the "2022 Dream Travel Airport Show" the year before last, a group of costumes with olive green as the main color, and its related design and shape were accused of being suspected of Japanese military uniforms.
Source: Li Ning
For a time, Li Ning was pushed to the forefront, causing heated discussions on the whole network.
In the face of the noisy public opinion, an e-commerce executive in Li Ning said in the circle of friends that this is from ancient Chinese culture. He also said, "Our consumers still have less ...... for the precipitation of Chinese culture and the inheritance of educational knowledge."
Li Ning officials only came out to respond at the end of the show for nearly a month, saying that "we will humbly listen to various voices and feedback, and make products that are more recognized by consumers".
Source: Li Ning
No matter where the inspiration for Li Ning's original design came from, from the moment this batch of clothes intuitively made people feel that they had a tendency to "hurt national feelings", this big show had already "failed".
Controversial design incidents such as these have exposed many problems and loopholes in Li Ning's internal management, and at the same time, Li Ning's crisis public relations has been slow to respond.
As the saying goes, one wrong step, one wrong step.
At the end of last year, the sub-brand China Li Ning presented a batch of mysterious design works. The designer reduced the brand's most recognizable logo infinitely, shrinking and shrinking again, to the point that anyone who could see the logo with the naked eye was considered a loser.
Source: Little Red Book
Other brands, especially luxury brands, have a logo as big as they want, or they are eager to spread it all over the page.
Source: Nike
Li Ning is good, but he does the opposite, for fear that others will see that it is "Chinese Li Ning".
Source: Xiaohongshu netizens
At the 2018 New York Fashion Week, the tomato scrambled egg color suit was superimposed with the eye-catching "China Li Ning" logo on the chest, which made Li Ning accidentally step on the cultural confidence projected by the public on these four big words, and blew up the whole network.
Source: Li Ning
Now that the popularity is long gone, it is a good thing for Li Ning to engage in subversion and innovation to maintain the sports trend line of the sub-brand, but it is troublesome for the brand to listen to the voice of consumers, otherwise innovation can easily become "Chuangfei".
Moreover, Li Ning is bent on using this wave of national tide dividends to achieve the high-end of the brand, in other words, to sell the products more expensive, which belongs to wanting to "take off on the spot" before forging profound skills.
When the national tide fever has passed, the lack of high prices supported by brand value formed by product research and development, design language, channel management, consumer experience and services will inevitably suffer from the backlash from the consumer market and capital market.
03
People often use "30 years in Hedong and 30 years in Hexi" to lament the impermanence of the world.
This sentence is most appropriate to apply to Li Ning, the former king of Chinese sports brands.
First of all, the founder of the brand is Li Ning, the "Prince of Gymnastics", who can be said to have been born with the golden key of "professional sports" genes.
For sports brands, the power of advertising in any channel is not as convincing as the brand's clothing directly appearing on the field of professional events and wearing directly on professional athletes.
In the early days of its establishment (Li Ning was founded in 1990), Li Ning frequently brushed his face in several international sports competitions (Asian Games and Olympic Games). After becoming the sponsor of award-winning equipment for four consecutive Olympic Games, Li Ning has become the leader of domestic sports brands and one of the national brands worthy of pride of the Chinese people.
But shopping malls are like arenas, and even the best athletes can encounter times when they are not in shape, let alone shopping malls full of competition and unknowns.
In the following years, Li Ning, which focused on the professional sports field and enriched its product line through acquisitions, seemed to have fallen into a strange circle - the strategic positioning of the brand has been wavering. As a result, after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Li Ning entered a 10-year period of stumbling and groping.
Until 2018, Li Ning seized an unexpected opportunity to turn the tables against the wind.
It is the New York Fashion Week mentioned above, after which Li Ning is like sitting through the clouds, the four-character Logo of "China Li Ning" leads the national fashion, and this series of products is sold out on the market, and Li Ning also took advantage of this to break into the world of young people born in the 90s on the basis of the national brand.
The Xinjiang cotton incident that broke out in March 2021 has played a role in fueling the prosperity of Li Ning.
Source: Guangming.com
The emotions of the family and the country involved behind the incident directly triggered the public's boycott of foreign brands such as Adidas, Nike, and H&M, but Li Ning was picked up because the tag of its goods was written "using Xinjiang cotton", which accurately stepped on the G spot of people's enthusiasm for "supporting domestic brands".
04
After these two major events, in September 2021, Li Ning reached the peak of the market value since the establishment of the brand, once exceeding HK$270 billion.
However, in less than three years, Li Ning's market value has volatilized by HK$210 billion, and now its market value has shrunk to more than HK$50 billion, nearly 1/5 of Anta's market value.
Li Ning went from being far ahead to being overtaken by the corner, and now he can't even see Anta's taillights, which is not a big contrast.
Some people attribute Li Ning's "repeated failures" to the lack of innovation at the product level, while on the other hand, they are spending money on marketing and inviting traffic stars to endorse.
The push up of marketing spending, and the goal of high-end branding, allow brands to smoothly graft costs to consumers, and now more and more people are condemning Li Ning, saying that "it is too expensive".
It is true that these are the shortcomings of Li Ning in the process of brand development.
Everything is interlinked.
When the national tide is extinguished, there will be outdoor wind, and after the outdoor wind, who can guess which wind will prevail.
But what is certain is that consumption will always have to return to rationality.
The only direction that the brand can determine is to make the quality and price of the product match the brand value at this stage, rather than blindly sitting on the ground and starting the price.
Yesterday was a controversial show, today is a plagiarism storm, and tomorrow's price will be raised unexpectedly.
Consumers want to support a sports brand that represents China, but why should you?