1990-1992 initial stage
1993-1995 high-speed development stage
1996-1998 business adjustment stage
1999 -200 1 secondary development stage
After 2002, the brand was rebuilt and the strategy was introduced into the professional development stage.
Li Ning Company is a typical bottom-up company in China, and its development strategy comes from the success of tactics. However, this process is full of twists and turns and is limited by many development conditions.
At the end of 2002, Li Ning Company began to introduce the development strategy of sports specialization into the company. With the introduction of professional development strategy, Li Ning quickly broke the situation that the turnover has been hovering around 700 million yuan since 1997: it reached12.76 million yuan in 2003,18.78 million yuan in 2004 and is expected to exceed 2 billion yuan in 2005. How did "Li Ning" interpret this legend?
Li Ning Company is a typical representative of the growth track of private enterprises in China in the past 20 years of reform and opening up.
China's vast market opportunities, luck, lack of strategy, imitation, the strength of the head, the temptation of being pushed forward by the China market, and countless problems in development can no longer cross the growth threshold of a certain digital sales. , are the characteristics of most private enterprises in China in the process of growth, and they have all experienced in the early rapid growth of Li Ning Company without exception. However, Li Ning Company is not exhausted in the darkness before dawn like most private enterprises, and is surrounded by countless problems. Li Ning Company, which broke through the bottleneck of growth, was successfully listed on the main board of China Stock Exchange in 2004, becoming the first sporting goods enterprise to be listed overseas. In 2005, its interim financial report exceeded 1, 654,380+0 billion yuan. How did Li Ning Company begin to stage this "good play"?
Li Ning Company advances happily and painfully.
The most different from many other private enterprises in China is that Li Ning Sporting Goods Co., Ltd. gained considerable popularity when 1990 was established. In many people's eyes, "Li Ning" is not only a brand name, but also a "Prince of gymnastics" carrying the dream of a generation to strengthen the country: he won the 106 gold medal and was once rated as one of the 25 greatest athletes in the 20th century, alongside Jordan and Bailey. The name "Prince of gymnastics" Li Ning, to a certain extent, promoted the rapid development of Li Ning Company in the early stage, and gave Li Ning a chance to show its hands and feet in the sporting goods market. It is this name that has branded the brand of Li Ning Company so deeply that Li Ning Company has to make considerable efforts to determine the brand strategy to weaken this influence in the later period.
In the early 1990s, strictly speaking, China had not fully implemented the market economy system. At that time, the China market still needed more than the supply market. In the sporting goods market, no well-known brands occupy the market, and the quality of products on the market is unstable. China people who have just started to get rich have begun to pursue a better life.
It is in this market environment that Li Ning Company entered the market and grew up rapidly. For the development of Li Ning Company, the words "strategy", "marketing" and "brand" that we often mentioned today must be involved in the development of enterprises. At that time, they could not be mentioned, and no one could understand what these words were.
At that time, the vast opportunities in China market decided that most enterprises pursued the "opportunity strategy" in their development. At that time, Li Ning Company, like most private enterprises in China, had a good mechanism and initial development funds, and everything was running according to traditional business thinking. The development of the company is far from an active strategy. According to Li Ning's own brand and influence, Li Ning Company only thinks that there will be a very good opportunity to enter the blank sporting goods market. Indeed, although there is no clear company development strategy, vision and clear positioning, Li Ning has developed very well in the sporting goods market.
In their book Marketing Revolution, Reece and trout said: "In the era of rapid economic growth, Japanese companies have prospered by producing products similar to their competitors, simply because the products are better in quality and cheaper in price." Like the development environment of Japan's economy, driven by the opportunities provided by the market, everything that Li Ning Company did in the early stage was to produce products with better quality and more aspects for the market, and then continuously expand the distribution network all over the country to provide products to people in more regions. As long as the products produced can be sold, the company doesn't care where the products really circulate and what the price is. The rapid growth of enterprises brought by opportunities has made Li Ning Company simply ignore the details and management capabilities of these management issues.
Opportunity strategy also makes it hard for Li Ning to resist the temptation of development. Li Ning Company, which originally only produced sportswear, inevitably diversified. Li Ning Company used to produce Li Ning brand suits and even Li Ning series leather goods, and entered the field of non-sporting goods market. This brand awareness without active strategy, development vision and sense of direction made Li Ning Company taste the bitter fruit later.
This disorientation of "Li Ning" is also manifested in the fact that during the 12 years before 2002, the company's advertising theme appeal changed eight times. From the earliest "hope for a new generation in China" to "keep the wonderful things for yourself" to "my sports exist", "the beauty of sports is enjoyed by the world" and "Excellence comes from the true colors" and so on. The advertisement of "Excellence comes from true colors" also invited Qu Ying as the image spokesperson. This advertisement, which has nothing to do with sports image, further shows that "Li Ning" still has not made a clear positioning for its own brand, and "opportunity strategy" still dominates the development of Li Ning Company.
In fact, in 1995, Li Ning Company adjusted its organizational structure and established "Li Ning Sporting Goods Group". And at the China Sporting Goods Expo held in the same year, "Li Ning" accounted for more than half of the total turnover. This tactical move has enabled Li Ning to establish a leading position in the sporting goods industry in China. Unfortunately, at this time, Li Ning Company did not concentrate its own resources through tactical success, and introduced and established its professional strategic positioning for developing the sporting goods market. But today, it seems that in the China market of 1995, the overall cluster environment and overall management ability of China enterprises determine that it is impossible for Li Ning Company to surpass the environment at that time and put forward its own development strategy from its own tactical actions. Originally, Li Ning Company was likely to grow into a well-known large domestic company like Lenovo and TCL today. However, due to strategic mistakes, Li Ning Company did not make great progress later.
[Hint]: When Volkswagen entered the American market, it found a feasible tactic-the gap of "small car", and thus launched the Beetle, which was a great success. However, Volkswagen did not turn this "small car" tactic into a strategy, and continued to launch consistent tactical activities against Japanese cars, which enabled Japanese cars to successfully occupy the market share of 65,438+0/3 in the United States.
Missed this strategic opportunity, which led to Li Ning's hesitation in the next seven years. This kind of confusion seems to be seen from the advertising appeals of "Li Ning", which have nothing to do with the changes in this period and the tactics are not consistent.
In the description of Li Ning's own development materials, there is such a description: "1993- 1995, high-speed development stage, 1996- 1998, business adjustment stage". In fact, due to the lack of strategic direction in development, Li Ning Company has touched the ceiling of growth.
1996, Li Ning Company achieved the highest sales revenue of 670 million yuan in history. At that time, the dream of Li Ning Company was 1 100 million in 1998 and 2 billion in 2000. However, things did not develop as expected by Li Ning Company. Instead, the growth stopped abruptly at 1997. Since then, until 200 1, the sales revenue of Li Ning Company has been hovering around 700 million. Of course, there is the impact of the financial turmoil, but the more fundamental reason is the lack of strategy.
Although during this period, Li Ning still ranked first in the sporting goods market in China, which was equivalent to the combined sales of Nike and Adidas in China. However, the market environment is changing dramatically every year, and the pace of this change is also accelerating year by year. At this time, competitors began to exert their strength in the market, including Adidas and Nike, and then Jinjiang Sporting Goods Corps headed by Anta. Li Ning Company is surrounded in the middle. If you don't advance, you will retreat.
Without a clear company brand positioning, tactical dispersion and the result of operation, Li Ning brand lingers between "professionalism" and "leisure" in consumers' minds, so that the Wall Street Journal once called Li Ning brand the "25th child" between leisure and sports.
At this time, everyone in Li Ning Company has felt that something close to the evil influence is preventing the company's efficiency from continuing to grow again. What is this? The company can't see it all at once
In 200 1 year, Zhang Zhiyong, a veteran who has served Li Ning for many years, became the CEO of the company. After introducing a professional marketing company to investigate the brand of Li Ning, Zhang began to carry out a series of reforms on Li Ning for three years.
Zhang Zhiyong found that at this time, Li Ning brand, compared with Nike and Adidas, sold well in first-class cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. However, due to the influence of wholesale channels on Li Ning brand many years ago and the unclear business direction of "Li Ning", Li Ning brand has been facing aging, and its brand image seems to be somewhat different from what Li Ning Company deliberately created at the beginning.
Professional company's investigation report soon before Zhang Zhiyong, the general conclusion is:
1. The target consumers of Li Ning brand are not clear. The target consumers targeted by the management of Li Ning Company are: students aged between 14-28, large and medium-sized cities, love sports, and advocate trendy fashion and international fashion trends. However, the core consumers who actually buy Li Ning brand sporting goods are between 18-45 years old, living in secondary cities, with moderate income, and are not "heavy consumers of sporting goods".
This brand is in danger of being forgotten. Brand loyalty is high, but loyal consumers are the generation who worship Li Ning. The younger generation doesn't know who Li Ning is, and Li Ning brand is indifferent to the fashion pursued by the new generation.
3. The brand personality is not distinct. In the eyes of real consumers, the personality of Li Ning brand is connected with Li Ning's own image, which is "affinity, nationality, sportsmanship and honor", rather than the brand personality of "young fashion" that Li Ning Company has been striving to create in recent years.
The product line of Li Ning brand is constantly expanding, so it is difficult to know what his "flagship product" is. More products will make consumers confused about the concept of "Li Ning brand".
Zhang was surprised. He didn't expect that the gap between Li Ning's brand and goal setting has reached such a point. Zhang feels that an organization must be established to be responsible for the overall planning of the brand. But where do talents come from? Many practitioners in the sports industry are experienced, and there is no such talent as Li Ning Company needs. Therefore, the company must introduce foreign brand managers. From 200 1 to 10, Li Ning Company set up marketing departments such as marketing department, sales department and operation support department to be responsible for the rebranding of Li Ning.
A few months later, Li Ning Company began to broadcast a new one-minute advertisement on TV. Advertising means: in front of young and energetic people, all external restrictions exist, everything has just begun, and everything can be created from scratch. "Everything is possible!" . With vivid pictures, this advertisement strongly implies a value commitment to the audience: owning Li Ning brand products is not only a daily necessities, but also a quality of life. This new slogan has been used to this day. This impact slogan is actually earlier than Adidas' "Nothing is impossible", but the outside world often thinks that "Li Ning" is imitating Adidas.
This unusual advertising tactical action, this unusual minute, opened Li Ning's rethinking and commitment to Li Ning's brand value, and it was this unusual advertising tactical action that made Li Ning grasp his own strategy later.
But at this time, there is still a long way to go before Li Ning explores and discovers the company's strategy and enables Li Ning to adopt a professional development strategy. The distance during this time is so critical. Many changes during this period are often beyond the power of many private enterprises. However, "Li Ning" is still quite stable and confident.
The Method of "Li Ning" Revolution
When Zhang Zhiyong became the CEO of the company, among all the problems he found, the most important one was to solve the problem of human resources in the company's development. As long as the human resource problem is solved, all other problems, such as company management, company marketing and strategy, seem to be solved soon.
People's problems are mostly encountered in private enterprises facing changes. Enterprises introduce talents to change enterprises. At this time, either "the east wind overwhelms the west wind" or "the west wind overwhelms the east wind", and fierce conflicts often occur between old and new forces. As a result of the conflict, whether foreign professional managers can finally settle down in the enterprise will do some harm to the development of the enterprise. But in Li Ning Company, these seem to be far away from them, and the personnel problems seem to be solved quite smoothly.
As early as 1997, Li Ning himself made it clear in the company that all relatives of senior leaders (including himself) had left their posts. He himself made it clear that he didn't want the family relationship to affect the company's modernization process and shareholding system reform process. It was Li Ning's determination that made Zhang Zhiyong let a group of old people who were not suitable for the company's development leave the company and important positions in 200 1, and the resistance was much smaller. The first batch of professional managers, such as Bennilu and Coca-Cola Xu, soon played their due roles in the positions of marketing director and marketing manager. In February, 2004, when the company's overall specialization strategy was promoted, Wu Xianyong, who had fallen from P&G to be the deputy general manager of Li Ning Company, had adapted to the development environment of Li Ning Company very smoothly. On the issue of personnel handling, it is difficult for many private enterprises to cross the past hurdle, and "Li Ning" has successfully crossed it.
At this time, although Li Ning Company is not short of funds in its development, in order to improve its management ability and prepare for listing in Hong Kong, Li Ning Company has adopted a unique strategy. June 5438 +2003 10, TETRAD, a Singaporean government investment company, and CDH Fund Company, a subsidiary of China International Finance Corporation, entered Li Ning Company and entered the board of directors. "Li Ning" entered the company by introducing these two strategic partners, and the most important thing is to introduce the advanced management concepts of these two companies into the company. This generous strategy of killing two birds with one stone can effectively solve the management problems in the company's development, which is often unexpected or impossible for many other private enterprises.
In addition, Li Ning Company hired Leo Boehner Advertising Company as the brand development consultant of Li Ning and Xinhua Xin to establish a standardized and professional performance management system for the company.
The most important change is that since 2002, Li Ning Company has asked IBM to do strategic consulting for the company. With the intervention and help of IBM, Li Ning Company's analysis of the business advantages, industrial environment and tactical success in the history of "Li Ning" enabled the company to quickly define the company's development direction, establish the company's vision and goals, and with the help of IBM, established the strategic subtraction of "Li Ning" and embarked on the strategic road of professional development.
[Tips] At the end of 2002, Li Ning Company introduced the strategy, and made adjustments on the occasion of the company's founding 15 anniversary, and established the company's mission, vision, values and business development strategy: the mission is to "inspire people's desire and strength to break through with sports! Committed to the creation of professional sporting goods, let sports change life and pursue a breakthrough in a higher realm. " Vision: The world's leading sporting goods brand companies need to enhance their international competitiveness in China market before 2008 to realize their internationalization. By 20 18, sporting goods will enter the top 5 in the world, and the company's business share in the international market will account for more than 20% of the total business. To become a sports brand management company will use multiple brands to cover different customers and regions, and more than two mainstream sports are in a strong position in the market.
Strategic introduction
When Zhang Zhiyong visits the market, he often compares Li Ning's stores with Nike and Adidas. Zhang often feels that for some reason, Li Ning's shop lacks an atmosphere, and Li Ning's shop often makes you feel that you don't know what to show. In the exclusive stores of Nike and Adidas, the air is filled with the smell of sports and fashion. Zhang Zhiyong also thinks that although Li Ning Company has done a lot of sports sponsorship activities for so many years, the efficiency of these sports sponsorship activities is not very high, and it has not completely formed an effective superposition. "Don't be Nike in China, be Li Ning in the world". It seems that this slogan is still too empty to effectively become the company's development strategy. The company must clearly formulate its own development strategy in order to form an effective breakthrough.
At the end of 2002, IBM's strategic consulting service team entered Li Ning Company. With the help of IBM, "Li Ning" carefully analyzed the whole sporting goods industry, consumer demand, market competition, internal management, competitive advantage and company resources. More and more problems have been discovered.
Dealers believe that "Li Ning" has too many SKUs every season, but the sales of single products are small and the mainstream products are discontinuous, so it is difficult to make sales forecasts; The series products are not good, for example, the table tennis series only has clothes but no table tennis shoes, and the products have no styles. In the internal management of the company, less than 30% of the products designed by designers are finally put into production, resulting in a lot of ineffective labor; The average life cycle of a product is only half a year, and some even only two months. There is no mainstream selling point running through the product, so the continuity of the product is poor, the originality of the product is poor, and the target customer group of the product design is not clear, which leads to the pertinence of the product design is not strong.
At the product ordering meeting, "Li Ning" did not have a clear marketing plan to guide dealers to order, and the products did not have professional sports attributes. The location of retail stores is general, the display location of shopping malls is not good, the coordination of different single stores is poor, the discounts are often inconsistent, and the it network is backward. This highlights that Li Ning Company has not made great efforts to cultivate its own retail management ability: the ability of site selection and negotiation is restricted by the management mechanism, the response speed is slow, the single store management ability (format, VM, category) is poor, the store replication ability and franchise management ability are poor, and the terminal information collection and analysis ability is poor.
The fuzziness of Li Ning's strategy leads to the fuzziness and tactics of business strategy (mainly dealing with it). To sum up, "Li Ning" brand lingers between fashion and specialty, R&D lacks leading purpose and core technology, the introduction and elimination of new product categories are arbitrary, self-built channels are not focused relative to integrated control, the market order is chaotic, retail multi-brands have no clear strategy relative to "Li Ning" monopoly, and the supply chain is between market-driven and production-oriented.
The lack of directionality leads to problems in the internal structure of the company, which in turn leads to problems in market operation. In short, all the problems of the company can be summed up as the core problem of lack of clear strategy.
However, in more than ten years of operation and market competition, Li Ning Company has made remarkable achievements and accumulated many resources: domestic sales volume is the largest, sales network is the largest, domestic sporting goods brand awareness is the highest, research and development system is the most perfect, domestic sports specialization is the highest, and it takes the lead in taking the international road with its own brand. Are these outstanding performances the core competitive advantages of "Li Ning"?
IBM believes that Li Ning's early entry into the market, solid sales channels and good comprehensive financial resources are its core competitive advantages.
IBM believes that Li Ning brand is the first China brand in the sporting goods industry. "Li Ning" completed the "first wave of offensive brand building" with the historic opportunity of China's reform and opening up and revitalization of national industries. The first-Mover advantage is obvious: the brand awareness is much higher than other domestic brands, even higher than Nike and Adidas; The comprehensive performance of the product has been widely recognized; The communication cost is relatively low; As "the first national brand in China", it has established a good relationship with the government and the public; The attributes of professional sports have a good foundation: the entrepreneur himself is a professional athlete (natural brand association), the sponsorship activities of the national professional sports team started early, and the only brand with the potential to promote professional attributes (single sports) in China. Theoretically speaking, "Li Ning" has the first-Mover advantage. After seizing the market, the subsequent competitors had to invest twice as much money to catch up in order to achieve today's achievements.
As for channels, Li Ning's sales network has begun to take shape. Although the network quality (such as store location and sales) is uneven, it has a solid foundation: the network coverage is large and comprehensive, which can radiate to major areas of the country; Retail terminal formats are diverse; The network is highly localized and operated by local people who are most familiar with the local market; After years of cultivation, dealers are relatively stable and have high loyalty to Li Ning brand. Good foundation for channel improvement, quick start, low secondary investment, horizontal expansion of channels, good vertical extension and penetration of channels, and diversified channels are compatible with multi-category products.
Therefore, based on the analysis of Li Ning's problems and advantages, IBM believes that Li Ning must give up its business development direction and concentrate resources to enlarge its original brand advantages.
Li Ning needs to take sports specialization as its development strategy.
Li Ning Company readily agreed to this proposal, which was at the end of 2002.
Specialization, releasing the power of "Li Ning"
With a sense of strategic direction, "Li Ning" began to unify tactical activities on the basis of the accumulation of 10 years ago. The market is the best tester. In 2002, the turnover of Li Ning Company reached about 958 million yuan, in 2003 it was 65.438+27.6 million yuan, and in 2004 it was 65.438+87.8 million yuan, a substantial increase of 47.2% over the previous year, and its net profit increased by 42.0%. In 2005, "Li Ning" is expected to exceed 2 billion yuan. We can see that "Li Ning" has achieved leap-forward growth in just over two years since its development strategy was determined at the end of 2002. How does "Li Ning" formulate new marketing tactics activities under the strategic guidance and sort out the problems existing in the development of the original company in order to meet the new development strategic objectives?
Sports specialization puts forward four requirements for Li Ning Company (as shown in figure 1): "Li Ning" should have a market positioning that meets the demands of consumers' sports psychology; Reasonable and perfect product line; Product functions to improve sports performance; Marketing and promotion of professional sports.
In view of these four aspects, "Li Ning" has formulated a series of strategies and launched many improved marketing activities.
The target population of Li Ning's sports specialization development strategy is between 15-25 years old. In view of this young consumer's professional sports orientation, it puts forward new requirements and changes the direction for product research and development, marketing and retail management. Changes in R&D, marketing and channels will be the key elements in the implementation of Li Ning's new brand strategy. "Li Ning" began a planned and purposeful tactical activity around the strategy.
In terms of R&D, the original situation of "Li Ning" is that "Li Ning" has a development center and certain R&D capabilities, but the product R&D is mainly based on styles and styles, and the core technology R&D investment is insufficient, and the product movement is low in serialization. According to the requirement of specialization strategy, Li Ning needs to increase the investment and strength of sports science and technology research and development, and increase the sports serialization of products. Under the guidance of this strategy, in August, 2004, Li Ning Company cooperated with Dr. Ned Frederick of Exeter R&D Company in the United States to develop the core technology of "Li Ning" sports shoes. In 2004, Li Ning Company cooperated with the Department of Human Sports Science of the Chinese University of Hong Kong to test the mechanical characteristics of the sports shoes produced by Li Ning Company, establish a database of professional athletes' feet, collect and analyze the data of professional sports characteristics, and further improve the professionalism and comfort of the products. June 2004 5438+ 10 month, with r&; D design company cooperated to design "Li Ning" sports shoes. In June, 2004, 165438+ 10, the Hong Kong Design and Research Center "Li Ning Sports Technology Development (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd." was established to design Li Ning brand clothing products.
In marketing, the original situation of "Li Ning" is that the core consumer groups are aging, the product positioning is biased towards leisure and lacks professional sports attributes. Affinity, as a brand personality, has not catered to and met the demands of young consumers, and the marketing promotion is mainly based on traditional media and emotional advertising. The direction of improvement is to target young consumers aged 15-25, and to downplay the promotion of leisure products; Create the image of professional sporting goods, create a sports, personalized and successful brand personality, adopt appropriate sports spokespersons, focus on product functional advertisements in the short and medium term, supplemented by emotional advertisements, and increase investment in sports marketing.
Under the guidance of this strategy, in February, 2003, Li Ning Company signed a contract with "Footballer of the Year" Li Tie, and both sides devoted themselves to the development of professional football products, which marked that Li Ning Company entered the field of professional football. In February 2004, the first Li Ning brand professional series "Tie" soccer shoes specially designed for soccer star Li Tie came out. In September, 2004, the first Li Ning brand professional basketball shoes Freejumper came out, which indicated that Li Ning entered the field of professional basketball products. In fact, at the end of 2004, Li Ning Company successfully entered new specialized footwear series in different sports categories (such as football, basketball, tennis, running and fitness, etc.). ).
At the same time, in advertising, "Li Ning" launched a series of functional advertisements aimed at raising public awareness of "Li Ning brand" sports products and new specialized footwear series. In April, 2004, a brand-new advertising series was launched with the theme of "Li Ning brings the power of sports take-off to China" and the brand concept of "Anything is possible", which achieved encouraging market response in China market.
On the channel terminal, the original situation of "Li Ning" is that leisure is the theme of product display, leisure is the focus of POP promotion and marketing in stores, and the product selection of dealers lacks sports considerations. The direction of improvement is to display products at the terminal according to sports events, promote in-store POP with emphasis on product technology and performance, and cultivate dealers and retailers to master sports science and technology knowledge and communication skills with consumers.
Under the guidance of this strategy, "Li Ning" began to adjust its channels very early. In addition to requiring dealers to open specialty stores, Li Ning has also made great efforts to train dealers and qualified store managers. At the same time, "Li Ning" is also building its own store. Basically, in every specialty store, "Li Ning" will communicate and explain to customers in detail through functional advertisements and in-store POPs according to the importance and complexity of technology. Product labels also have detailed descriptions and explanations of technology. These small changes have gradually formed a high-tech and professional image of Li Ning brand in the hearts of consumers. In fact, by the end of 2004, the total number of "Li Ning" stores had reached 2,887, including 2,526 retail stores operated by franchisees, 20 self-operated retail stores/kloc-0 and 24 self-operated counters. In addition, three flagship stores have been opened in prime locations in Beijing and Shanghai, with large storefronts and modern display and decoration. By 2005, the image of these shops had been upgraded for the fourth time to adapt to the new development trend.
Among the many adjustments of marketing strategy, Li Ning's sports marketing adjustment is the most obvious. After the strategic goal is clear, Li Ning's sports marketing has also moved towards specialization. At this time, Li Ning focused on the competition for sports marketing resources, with concentrated resources and greatly improved efficiency.
In the past, Li Ning Company lacked a clear guiding strategy in sports sponsorship. Compared with competitor Nike's strategy of focusing only on football and basketball, "Li Ning" allocated the limited sports promotion expenses to the sponsorship of multiple projects, which directly caused insufficient support for a single project. In a consumer survey of all nine sports sponsored by Li Ning, only one sports has a recognition rate of over 50%. The awareness rate of most sponsored projects among consumers is low; The scattered events show that Li Ning lacks clear strategies in sports sponsorship (including project selection and team selection).
At the same time, compared with Nike and Adidas, "Li Ning" lacks professionalism in sponsorship. If the sponsorship of athletes and events is 1, Nike and Adidas will spend 10 on sports marketing and communication with consumers, and inform consumers of the sponsorship through such a large investment, while "Li Ning" only has 1-2. "Li Ning" has limited investment in sports marketing communication, which leads to low visibility of sponsored projects and lack of social effects. At the same time, this is also a main reason why Li Ning's marketing resources are scattered and not concentrated.
Therefore, "Li Ning" changed its strategy in sports marketing. "Li Ning" began to concentrate resources on core events, core teams and athletes, insisted on long-term investment and training, and increased the communication cost of sports marketing.
In fact, Nike is constantly improving the application of sports marketing in China. After several years of trial and practice in China, Nike decided to change the strategy of sponsoring national and local basketball teams at all levels, and only sponsored two adult national teams and three A teams. While reducing sponsorship investment, Nike seized individual teams with high effect of attracting audiences and stars, and the actual effect did not weaken, and gained better input and output.
Through investigation, consumers believe that football and basketball have a much higher promotion effect on the future of Li Ning brand than other sports. Young consumers, especially those aged 15-29, think that basketball plays the most important role, followed by football.
Based on this, "Li Ning" changed its investment mode of sports marketing, and its marketing activities also changed accordingly.
Marketing promotion around sponsoring players and teams. Shoot advertising films with the theme of sponsoring players and teams, organize the broadcast and exchange of sports events, and increase the social effect of the brand through market public relations and news events. In 2003, "Li Ning" signed a contract with football player Li Tie and launched a series of publicity activities around Li Tie, including the launch of "Tie" series.