With the FIFA World Cup just a few weeks away, multinationals in China and domestic companies are displaying strikingly different attitudes towards sports marketing campaigns connected to the world's most popular sport.
Most multinationals have not come up with specific World Cup campaigns, but a number of Chinese companies have launched football-related promotions.
Royal Philips Electronics is one of the few multinationals to launch a marketing campaign, which recently kicked off with an 11-city roadshow through China. The programme has been so successful that Philips' sales in the cities it has toured through have grown dramatically. But the heightened promotional effort is largely due to the company's role as an official sponsor of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, as well as its enthusiasm for sports marketing.
"Football is the world's most popular sport and China has the most football fans in the world, so this is a perfect time for us to bring customers closer to the World Cup, to our philosophy and to our latest products," says Frank Chen, chief marketing officer for Philips China.
The Dutch giant has been sponsoring the World Cup since 1986, and has supplied consumer electronics, lighting, domestic appliances, and defibrillators, as well as non-exclusive rights for a semiconductor-based ticket system for this year's tournament.
Other official World Cup sponsors, such as Budweiser and Adidas, have also launched World Cup promotions, but most multinationals have chosen to pass on the opportunity.
Luo Qingqi, president of marketing consultancy Pully Consulting, believes some of these companies have been uninterested in using the tournament as a marketing opportunity partly because the Chinese team won't be playing this year, and partly because Chinese consumers have been unenthusiastic about the event.
Zhang Bin, deputy editor at China Central TV's (CCTV) sports channel, estimates advertising revenues in the Chinese media could drop by as much as 400 million yuan (US$50 million) from the 2002 World Cup, when the Chinese team was in the finals.
But the absence of the Chinese team has not stopped domestic companies from using the event to promote their products and services. Sina Corp, the country's largest Internet portal and online advertising company, spent 50 million yuan (US$6.25 million) on coverage and services related to the World Cup. But Vice-President Shen Jianming says the company could recover its investment before the matches even begin.
Tsingtao Beer also spent 40 million yuan (US$5 million) to sponsor a football programme on CCTV's sports channel during the World Cup. The company expects double-digit, year-on-year sales growth between April and July, based on advertising and marketing campaigns connected to the tournament.
The popular Chinese brewer has also already benefited from its sponsorship of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Its brand value rose from 16.8 billion yuan (US$2.1 billion) in 2004 to 20 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion) by the end of 2005.
(China Daily 05/22/2006 page4)
