As the world's most athletic brand, Nike, how does it create and market events, and what help does it do in the youth field?
Every year, the Nike China High School Basketball League (referred to as "Naico") is enough to make young people who love basketball boil, this event has 220 middle schools and nearly one million high school students participating in this event every year, and young players from all over the country interpret the belief of "only once in a lifetime" on the court, which is a more exciting reality than "Slam Dunk".
When last season's champion Huipu Middle School faced Wenzhou Ba High School at home, how many people's basketball soul was burning;When witnessing Hailiang Foreign Language Middle School winning the championship of the Zhejiang Division and the successful conclusion of the first competition in the first division, the glory of how many dream-chasing teenagers on the field was crowned.
Nike, as one of the brands with the most sports genes in the world, sponsored this basketball tournament and continued to build the campus basketball flagLet's take a look.
The enduring season and the timeless team also show that this is an extraordinary school game, which has created many young star players and recorded many famous scenes on the court. In this year's Naigao competition, you can see the Huipu Warcraft Dan Houran, the "Trident" of Tsinghua High School, and the core of Hailiang Wang Junjie, who staged the drama of the return of heroes, showing their majesty on the field;You can also witness Zhu Baitao, a player who returned to Pu and missed last year's Necoco award ceremony due to injury in the game, and couldn't hide his excitement when he touched the trophy.
In addition to the wonderful famous scenes, every official announcement and every market action of Necoco affects the hearts of followers, and it has its own methods in building urban and campus culture. Next, let's dismantle what key marketing actions have been made by Neco, and how to convey Nike's diverse basketball spirit
At the beginning of this year, the capital took Necoco as the blueprint and sampled the event structure, team setting, and stadium style of the Naigro League to create the Chinese version of "Slam Dunk" of the domestic basketball animation "Left Hand Layup". After the broadcast of this anime, 7With a Douban score of 9, 2,400 people participated in the scoring, which is enough to see the influence and radiation scope of the Naigao League.
As the second largest basketball country in China after the United States, Nike continues to actively sow and cultivate the soil, bring the cultural experience of Neigco basketball to various campuses, and move from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to more cities. Before the start of the 2022-2023 season, Nike released a series of short films represented by three high-tech teams, Hunan Geology Middle School, Linhai Huipu Middle School and Tsinghua High School, with the theme of "Fighting for Hometown".
The subjects of the short film focus on Hunan Geology Middle School, Linhai Huipu Middle School, and Beijing Tsinghua High School, three teams, which come from three cities with completely different temperaments, but because of the intersection of the competition. The men's basketball team of Hunan Geology Middle School led by Coach Peng Zhiqiang loves spicy food, is not afraid of pain, and is "full of gangsterism" in the high-tech arenaAlthough Huipu Middle School comes from a comfortable town, they have never been restricted by the four directions to explore the world, they are the big giants in the small city;The women's basketball team of Tsinghua University High School in Beijing has a rich history given to themOne side of the water and soil to raise one side of the people, but also to raise one side of the ball, the team behind different temperament cities is different, this is also the spirit of multi-faceted basketball that Necoco wants to convey.
In fact, Necometer has been breaking the public's inherent perception, who says that small town basketball can't be played?The outstanding performance of Huipu Middle School in the Naigao field allowed them to win the championship of the finals last season and start the team's name, and at the same time, more Linhai people walked on their footsteps on the court and grew into giants in the Naigao field.
In addition to regional diversity, Necodonic also respects and tolerates the gender of players, calling on young players from all over the country, different cultural backgrounds, and different genders to interpret the belief of "only once in a lifetime".
In October of this year, Nike's "Mom and Dad Say Go" released a new issue of "Team Up, Girls", which is also one of the few to focus on the two girls from a basketball perspective. The two female classmates in the short film, Siyuan and Taoran, due to the congenital difference in physical strength between men and women, their natural personality makes them experience the troubles of youth, but fortunately, all problems have been solved in the process of getting along and communicating with their mothers. And the two girls gradually came together and became the best partners in the team.
Necoco has entered every family that pays attention to basketball and loves basketball, those amateur players who are in the growth period of youth pay attention to them, and the former Naigro champion players have never left their field of vision.
Recently, Necoco released a "story before he shot after Necometer won the championship"**Former Necoco champion player Xin Zelin received a call from the past**, talking about how he made his wishes come true one by one along the court on the court.
The players' actual combat experience on the field is deeply combined with the Naigo competition, so that the players and the audience can feel the humanistic feelings behind the Naigao League.
At the same time, Nike has also established the Naigao Alumni Association to gather seniors and seniors who have been on the field, build a communication platform starting from the Naigao League, and enhance the sense of belonging between the school, hometown and players. Necometer tries to penetrate into the hearts of every teenager who loves basketball from the social circle of all dimensions of the teenagers.
The spark of campus sports is bursting out with the help of the brand of this event.
The annual Naigro is not only a contest between players on the field, but also a good opportunity for brands to show their strengths. For this basketball league, which is exclusively sponsored by Nike, its promotion of the brand itself and products is naturally indispensable.
This year, Nike has created a series of exclusive color sneakers for Neco, the Air Zoom Gt.Cut 2 is a refreshing and flattering blue-green gradient with a white upper for a youthful vibe. In terms of styling, as last year's "King of Combat" Air Zoom Gt.The second generation of the cut, the body line is extremely fast. When the players stepped on the high-limit sneakers on the field, it was natural for the brand to fulfill its mission.
In addition to the boots on the field, Nike also focused on off-court wear and continued the series of shoes on the field. For example, this Air Force 1 Low still follows the unified gradient design of the series in terms of color matching, and Nike has carried out comprehensive research and development and promotion of the product through the competition.
In addition to focusing on teenagers, Nike also focuses on children. It launched a series of Naigro basketball products with the same theme, including two pairs of Nike's practical basketball shoes designed for children, the Nike Air Zoom Crossover and the Nike Team Hustle D 11, which encourage young players to be bold on the basketball court and bring the "Naigro spirit" to the extreme.
Nike's creation of events and products is closely focused on the preferences of young people and the sense of experience on the field, and at the same time shifts the needs of young people from simple functional satisfaction to emotional drive, so that more and more people who pay attention to Necometer fall in love with Nike's brand and products.
When a sports event is out of the circle, it must be accompanied by the commercialization of the brand. This year, the Naigao League attracted the gold owner Dongpeng Hydration as the official designated electrolyte water to support the event, and witnessed the experience of "only once in a lifetime".
Dongpeng hydration has sounded the clarion call for this season's high-altitude events. During the league, Dongpeng Hydration not only conveyed the brand message of "Hydration is necessary to replenish when you play, and quickly replenish electrolytes" to the audience through online and offline advertisements. The exposure of a large number of brand logos also further strengthens the impression of the brand in the minds of users, enhances the interaction between the brand and the sports crowd, and the deep emotional connection with ordinary consumers.
However, on the whole, there are not many brands invested in the Naigao League, most of them are fast-moving consumer goods such as Dongpeng Hydration and Master Kong Drinking Boiled Water, but with the joint sponsorship of these brands, the organic combination of brand assets and league assets is formed, which builds a bridge between brand culture and campus sports.
As the creator of the basketball feast of Neco, what is the significance of Nike in helping the development of campus basketball culture in many ways?Different from the previous commercial league behavior, the Naigao League has developed into an indispensable part of China's school basketball competition system. From the perspective of the industry, the Naigao League is currently the only official national high school league in China, which to a certain extent makes up for the lack of high-quality competitions in China's campus sports, and also opens up more commercial space.
However, Nike's sponsorship of basketball is not the only sports brand. ANTA founded the ANTA Cement College Outdoor Basketball League, which is a school-level basketball league for college basketball enthusiasts based on ANTA Sports' market position in China and cooperation with well-known universities in many key cities.
In addition to the creation of the event itself, ANTA also created outdoor basketball shoes such as "Cement Buster", "Light Cavalry" and "Domineering" to help college students compete outdoors. Sometimes a brand's involvement in a professional league is both a brand innovation and a passive move, and when competitors continue to expand their territory in sporting events, other brands are bound to be passively involved in the melee.
And this is both opportunities and challenges for sports brands. On the one hand, devoting oneself to professional sports events for young people can gain some professional event production experience, which can be effectively combined with their own product research and development. Backed by Nike's Naiga, we have also learned from the mature experience in the U.S. market at this point, and created a top event for Chinese school basketballIn addition, instead of participating in the high cost and uncertainty of some large-scale sports events with high thresholds, it is better to create a professional event by yourself, and in the process of long-term investment for many years, you can also build your own event IP, precipitate brand equity, and then complete commercial realization.
However, when many sports brands take root in sports events, it becomes a challenge to break through among many brands and establish a long-term brand moat with customized content. For Neco, it is constantly combined with real-time popular contexts, two-way penetration between youth minds and brand tonality, and encourages the diversified development of youth culture through multiple dimensions such as event endorsement, product creation, and resource investment. But when a brand event reaches the inflection point of the industry, it will face a situation of market saturation. Therefore, Necometer not only focused on the "Youth Track", but also set its sights on the "Children's Track" to accompany children from basketball entry to advancement, encouraging children of all ages to experience and fall in love with basketball, and continuously accumulating strength for the development of the brand's "Youth Track" in the future.
In the case of event marketing for sports brands, we see a new trend, and the era of brand-building sports events has arrived. The use and co-creation of authoritative sports event content, self-made event IP can better attract and cover a large number of consumers and more brands to form a joint force, the future brand sports market will be in a state of "exquisite involution", as for who can roll out the characteristics, it depends on their own strength.
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