Looking for China Answers

By 2010, China is predicted to be the world’s 4th largest ad market; a decade ago its ranking was insignificant. The Beijing Olympics alone will boost ad expenditure this year by $3 billion, and the Games will also grow television share across the world.

China is on the mind of every marketing executive today. Not only does one need to understand the sometimes enigmatic outlook of the Chinese consumer or business person, but numerous geo-political and macro-economic issues can factor in the most basic of marketing strategies.

China advertising experts and Olympic marketers investing locally and globally share their views on the build-up to the Beijing Games. The latest CSM research shows that sponsors of the Beijing Games are gaining great brand strength within

This may be the first major sporting event to underscore the need for a local marketing strategy that differs significantly from a more general international one.

One World, One Dream One Huge Investment. Driving ROI from the Olympics Sponsorship

BEIJING – 2008. April 2008 – Now in its seventh wave, CSM and R3’s Olympic Sponsor Benchmarking survey has now run for nearly 24 months and collected over 10,000 interviews worth of data. With this latest wave, the trends shed much light about consumer attitudes and behavior regarding all things Olympic. Trends in attention paid to sport events, stars and actual sports themselves and their interrelationship have helped focused marketing efforts in the appropriate areas.

Intense Competition for Beijing 2008

Matt Brosenne, CSM’s Business Development Director notes, “The competitive environment of Olympic Sponsorship with over 60 companies vying for share of Olympic voice has been anything but easy, but overall we are seeing strong signs that the promotional activities utilized by sponsors are having an effect. This becomes apparent by looking back over results for all our previous waves.”

Olympic popularity at all time high within China 90% + of bulletin board messages positive Despite some of the issues domestically and globally in recent months, China’s optimism for the Olympics is at an all time high. In the latest wave, confidence levels continue to rise, and at the same time, negative issues are around half the level of two years ago. There is a consistent belief across all ten cities that this will be a great sporting showcase for China.

CSM and R3 also analyzed more than ten of the largest bulletin boards including Sohu, Sina, NetEase and Baidu in the last three weeks – covering millions of messages of support for China, the torch and the athletes “The torch protests have only increased China’s passion and commitment to the Olympics — while it will hurt sponsors outside of China, internally they may well be rewarded for staying the course” said Greg Paull, Principal of R3

NBA, Basketball heads for popularity, passion

Attention paid to the NBA continues to lead the way in our latest round of results. The NBA has held this leadership position for every wave of the survey and in the past wave posted its highest attention score with almost 40% of respondents paying attention to this sport. The Chinese Basketball Association came in second place (surpassing the EPL) and showed once again while the CBA season is underway, this sport property draws significant interest. The start of the Chinese Super League (China’s Soccer League) in March is likely to draw significant interest as it has done in past waves. To understand the interest in these properties a quick cross reference with the Olympic Sports people pay attention to helps to explain these high interest levels. While Ping Pong continues to lead the way with over 50% of respondents paying attention to this Olympic sport, basketball has made considerable progress and is now mentioned by over 40% of respondents for the first time. The NBA season will end at the doorstep of the Olympics and will continue to drive attention as the regular season comes to a close and the playoffs begin. The unfortunate injury to Yao Ming means we will have to wait one more year to see what would happen in terms of NBA attention if Yao Ming and his team go deep into the playoffs. Track and field also is in the top four followed by soccer. Soccer’s strong performance is an indicator of interest to come over the following months for the CSL.

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