{"id":3378,"date":"2017-04-11T16:39:08","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T07:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/?p=3378"},"modified":"2024-05-27T16:51:41","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T07:51:41","slug":"discovering-sports-marketing-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/discovering-sports-marketing-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovering Sports Marketing in China"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>IMAGE SOURCE: FOTOLIA<\/h6>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Talking to Tom Elsden, Senior Client Manager at Mailman. Sharing his insights with us to better explain the complexity of sports social media marketing in China.\u00a0He describes the Chinese market as, Relentless, Ever-changing &amp; full of Opportunities.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6294 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/social-media-usage-china-940x500-1-600x319.png\" alt=\"china social media\" width=\"600\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/social-media-usage-china-940x500-1-600x319.png 600w, https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/social-media-usage-china-940x500-1-768x409.png 768w, https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/social-media-usage-china-940x500-1-650x346.png 650w, https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/social-media-usage-china-940x500-1.png 940w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong><br \/>\nQ1: Tell us about yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m from London in the UK and have been in China for over 4 years now. I\u2019ve been at Mailman for most of that time, working with Western sports brands, organisations and talent to grow their businesses in China.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q2: What would be your advice to foreign brands looking to expand into China?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst of all, understand who you\u2019re trying to reach!<\/p>\n<p>The audience is different here compared to the West and so is what makes them tick.<\/p>\n<p>Then you need to figure out how you\u2019re going to connect with them. Social media is the first brand touch point but it\u2019s hugely competitive online, so you\u2019ll have to be creative and consistent with your communications.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Nike : Just do It in China\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h2NPKFKsKp0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Q3: You are working mainly with sports brands. What are the 3 top sport brands in China?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cNBA \u00a0\u00a0is different as \u00a0it is a basketball league. They are huge out here and are the most popular sports league. Nike is hugely popular and \u00a0is still dominating the apparel industry. Manchester United \u00a0is the most popular \u00a0football club.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>&#8220;We\u2019ve found that Chinese fans love to play basketball, while only enjoying to watch football.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Q4: Do Chinese love sports? What are their favorite sports to watch or play?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201c The sports industry is still relatively new in China compared to the West. There wasn\u2019t mass participation of sports from the youth due to a focus on education, which has massively impacted the talent pool. We\u2019ve found that Chinese fans love to play basketball, while only enjoying to watch football. Although there\u2019s other sports that have a growing level of participation of certain sports, including badminton and ping pong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>Q5: \u00a0What are the top apps and social channels that drive most sports brands in China?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cWeibo and WeChat are the top two social channels that brands can use to launch their own presence online. Weibo is your Twitter-like publishing platform for brand awareness and follower acquisition. Meanwhile WeChat is similar to a membership platform, where a brand\u2019s core fans sign up to receive daily push messages. The sports media dominate the top apps, Tencent Sports and Sina Sports apps are particularly strong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>Q6: Have been some of your most successful campaigns for the sports industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>&#8220;Successful KOL Integration\u00a0&amp; Striking an emotional cord&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe Voice of Bundesliga campaign \u00a0had launched last year, encouraging Chinese fans to vote for their favorite Bundesliga fan atmosphere. The Bundesliga then selected two winners to visit the stadium of their dreams and experience the atmosphere of a real game.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The success of the campaign was based on three key factors:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Simplicity: fans only had to vote for their favorite stadium atmosphere to win a trip to Germany<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Integrated: we worked with Chinese KOLs, Weibo and WeChat paid promotion and media buy to drive Chinese sports fans to the microsite<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Emotional: \u00a0The atmosphere created by German fans is one of the most attractive elements of the Bundesliga, and struck a chord with the Chinese fans<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kobe Bryant announced his retirement from the NBA with his final game of the season in April 2016. By leveraging his online popularity and driving interaction with his fans, the hashtag for his final season, #KB20# grew to 1 billion total reads.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For the case study:<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mailmangroup.com\/en\/case-study\/kobe-sets-hashtag-record\/\"> http:\/\/www.mailmangroup.com\/en\/case-study\/kobe-sets-hashtag-record\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Q7: How do you see sports marketing landscape growing in 2017?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u201cWe\u2019re mainly going to see more professionalism&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019re going to see continued investment in the sports industry, but into new areas. Sports real estate and education will be booming as the government has mentioned their focus on these areas.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Western sports brands will continue to compete for market share with this being the golden period for brands in China. \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">If you would like to know more about Chinese Sports Marketing visit: \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mailmangroup.com\/en\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">http:\/\/www.mailmangroup.com\/en\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IMAGE SOURCE: FOTOLIA Talking to Tom Elsden, Senior Client Manager at Mailman. Sharing his insights with us to better explain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,247],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-trend-watch"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3378"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6296,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378\/revisions\/6296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}