Text | Doc the Knife Warrior
Who won Yili or Mengniu?
聊一聊奥运营销,交个朋友加V:efangfeng
In the marketing of this year's Paris Olympics, I think everyone has discussed a lot about the secret war between Mengniu and Yili.
One of the voices believed that Yili had once again successfully ambushed Mengniu. This point of view really satisfies many people's expectations for business wars, and everyone likes to watch the plots of "the sword goes sideways", "wins by surprise", and "wins more with less".
Many people ridiculed Mengniu, as the official sponsor of the Olympic Games, for being stupid and having a lot of money, and this time he did a lot of wrongdoing.
After hearing these mindless voices, I decided to talk about the Olympic battle between the two dairy giants from a marketing perspective.
It needs to be declared: This is not a commercial advertorial of any brand, so I don't need to stand in line, just to pursue the refreshing feeling of spitting out.
01 One wins the battle, the other wants to win the war
In June 2019, Mengniu signed a US$3 billion, 12-year contract with the IOC in Lausanne, Switzerland, in conjunction with Coca-Cola, to become a TOP co-sponsor, the first joint global partnership (TOP) agreement in Olympic history.
At the level of cooperation, Mengniu enjoys a number of exclusive and priority rights, including global access to Olympic intellectual property, priority advertising rights, and participation in the torch relay.
In contrast, Yili is the official dairy partner of the Chinese sports delegation, and the sponsorship rights are much lower, and the two sides are significantly different.
However, Yili has a lot of games on social networks, and the movement is even bigger.
As soon as the Paris Olympics logo came out, netizens said that it was like Lu Yu, and Yili immediately officially announced that Lu Yu became Yili's ambassador for the Paris Games. It also invited Liu Dagang, the actor of Sha Monk, to serve as the "Yili Paris Fashion Ambassador", which is full of humor and fun, and integrates into the context of young people, making it easier to get out of the circle.
In addition, Sanlitun exposed the incident in advance, although there are obvious marketing traces at a glance for discerning people, which is a typical strategy of "exchanging voice with word-of-mouth".
Because users are in an excited mood, they will only blame Yili for being a little anxious, and will not cause vicious public opinion incidents, so for Yili, it has won the voice of social networks, but it has not lost much brand reputation. If you want to know more about Yili's Olympic marketing actions, you can Baidu, there are many related articles.
In the end, in terms of communication volume, Yili's social network is louder than Mengniu's. On the 30-day WeChat index, Yili is more than 9 times that of Mengniu, and on Douyin, Yili's popularity in the past 30 days is 3.3 times that of Mengniu.
From the perspective of volume, Yili is undoubtedly a complete victory.
However, it is too one-sided to look at the wins and losses of a marketing battle purely from the perspective of social heat. After all, we can't just look at the volume and not the sales.
That's where you need to introduce an indicator: ROAS. In English, it means Return on Ad Spend, which means return on ad delivery.
This is a key indicator of the success of a marketing campaign, as it is a better indicator of how much sales or revenue each ad spend contributes.
Of course, we can't get specific investment figures for Mengniu and Yili, and we can't see how much sales the Olympic Games have brought in. However, because the growth rate of advertising expenses of the two companies is almost at the same time, it is possible to take the annual advertising expenditure as a reference.
We take 2022 as a reference, this year also has a sports event comparable to the Olympics - the Qatar World Cup, Mengniu is the global official sponsor of FIFA, and most of the marketing expenses of that year were invested in the marketing campaign of the Qatar World Cup. Although Yili does not have any official rights, it has also assembled 5 national teams and 4 stars to form its own dream team, which is a routine for marketing this year's Paris Olympics.
Therefore, comparing the ROAS of the two companies in 2022 can reflect the advertising efficiency of the brand, let's take a look at the specific spending:
In 2022, Mengniu's advertising expenses totaled 5.5 billion yuan, the total operating income was 92.6 billion yuan, and the ROAS was 16.83. In comparison, Yili's total advertising expenditure was 14.7 billion, the total revenue was 123.17 billion, and the ROAS was 8.38. In 2022, Yili's advertising expenses will be 2.7 times that of Mengniu, but its revenue will only be 1.33 times that of Mengniu, and its ROAS will be almost half of that of Mengniu.
In other words, in the year of the World Cup, Mengniu could earn nearly 17 yuan from 1 yuan of advertising fees, while Yili could only earn 8.38 yuan per dollar of advertising expenses.
Therefore, it can be concluded that Mengniu is indeed doing much worse than Yili in social networks, because it has invested a lot of budget in core rights and interests, and has done less in peripheral voices. However, whether it is the Qatar World Cup or the Paris Olympics, there is a relatively large brand leverage effect.
According to a third-party report, every 1% increase in corporate brand awareness requires about $20 million in advertising spending. For the same investment in the marketing of large-scale sports events, the visibility can be increased by 10%.
This also explains why Yili and Mengniu are vying for the rights and interests of the top Olympic partners, and the cost of guerrilla warfare on the flanks is not necessarily lower than that of positional warfare. In fact, if you think about it the other way, you can understand that if this TOP equity is not valuable, both sides will stop fighting, and it would be good to go to ambushes and guerrilla warfare.
In short, it is not so much that Yili won the Olympics by surprise, but that Mengniu ambushed Yili.
02 Why does Mengniu keep winning the global sports IP?
Why does Mengniu always have the right to sponsor the world's top events such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games? Study hard from Yili, isn't it good to keep playing side balls?
In fact, in addition to the above-mentioned competition IP, which can bring great brand leverage, there is also a key word "going overseas".
The China Dairy Association disclosed at the 15th Dairy Conference this year that the domestic dairy market has fallen into a state of relative overcapacity, which has suppressed the domestic market. Nielsen data shows that in 2022 and 2023, China's dairy omni-channel revenue will decline by 6.50% and 2.40% year-on-year, respectively.
It is imminent for the dairy industry to go to sea, and Mengniu and Yili are making efforts to go to sea. Mengniu remembered his Olympic partner, Coca-Cola.
Archimedes said, give me a fulcrum, and you can pry the earth. For Coca-Cola, giving it a big IP can leverage the world.
The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were the golden time for Coca-Cola's global business to take off. At that time, the Olympics were being held for the first time in Asia, and the Coca-Cola Company made a big splash with television commercials and provided Japanese and English phrase booklets to officials, journalists, and spectators, a format that was adopted by many of the following Olympic Games.
After a series of operations, Coca-Cola's global influence has risen rapidly, and its performance has climbed rapidly. In 1963, Coca-Cola could only sell 6 million cases worldwide, and by 1965, Coca-Cola's global sales had more than tripled to nearly 20 million cases. By 1966, Coca-Cola's overseas sales accounted for 45% of global sales.
Paul ·, then CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, proudly said that Coca-Cola's advertising had become "the language of the world – the lingua franca of the world's business." In the past, we were just United States businesses with branches overseas; Now, we are truly global and multinational."
In my opinion, it is an attempt to replicate Coca-Cola's Olympic marketing approach and leverage the Olympics to leverage the global market.
However, Mengniu's overseas business is not easy, the dairy industry in Europe, America and Australia is strong, and there is great resistance to reverse export to these regions, but there are great opportunities in Southeast Asia, South Asia and other markets. In 2023, Mengniu acquired the ice cream brand Alice, occupying the first share in Indonesia and the third share in the Philippines, and is also expanding into the Viet Nam and Thailand markets.
I was surprised to find that Alice is also using the role of a global partner of the Olympic Games to do marketing in Indonesia and the Philippines.
However, it is difficult to support overseas business with ice cream and other categories alone. In 2022, Mengniu's overseas business revenue accounted for 4.96% of the total revenue, and this proportion will drop to 4.35% in 2023, with a total overseas revenue of nearly 4.3 billion yuan. In the future, it is difficult to say whether Mengniu can rely on these sports IPs to turn over overseas, at least it has made a start in the Olympics.
03 Guerrilla marketing never wins wars
Recently, I was working as a judge for the Mathematics Awards, and I saw a lot of whimsical ideas, but some of the more regrettable cases were airplane drafts. This year's Cannes Festival of Creativity is also a lot of whimsical ideas, but not many can be implemented.
There is a marketing concept overseas that is guerrilla marketing, which is Guerrilla marketing in English. This marketing model is proposed by Jay · Levinson, a senior marketing expert in United States, and the core proposition is to spend small money to do big things, this concept was once all the rage, and there are also translations in China as ambush marketing.
A typical marketing case is the credit card wars during the 1988 Olympics. At that time, Visa won United States Express and won the official sponsorship of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games in Korea. However, United States Express was bent on traffic, so it released a print ad with a photo of the opening ceremony of the 1986 Asian Games in Seoul, titled "United States Express welcomes you to Seoul." The purpose of this ad is to mislead readers into thinking that it is a photo of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which caused quite a stir.
Guerrilla marketing is actually not uncommon in China, and synonyms are generally idea, ambush marketing, and online hype.
These idea gimmicks are very sufficient, very suitable for mass communication, and are more likely to become people's talking points.
We have always had a myth about the worship of winning with less, and winning by surprise. We always love to talk about the miracles of history, and it seems that with enough wisdom and cunning, we can ignore the disparity in power and subvert a powerful enemy in one fell swoop. This obsession, like an ecstasy, makes many marketers indulge in unrealistic fantasies.
It's time to break that obsession.
From the burning of Chibi to the flooding of the Seventh Army, all of them are examples of winning more with less. However, in the face of Cao Wei's absolute strength, Zhuge Liang's resourcefulness was only in vain.
My point of view is that marketing is now past the era of tricks and gimmicks, and what is needed is real management, and it needs to rely on those basic skills that don't seem very cool. Guerrilla marketing never wins wars. It is suitable for small battles, while the real battlefield is based on your marketing position, and the real war is a 1v1 competition between the two sides.
I am not denying the value of wisdom and courage, but when these are exaggerated and used as an excuse for everyone to take shortcuts and super fast tracks, we should be soberly aware that true victory is often built on a solid foundation.
Marketers, get rid of the excessive obsession with winning by surprises!