The unexpected happened when everyone was eagerly anticipating football superstar Lionel Messi's performance in an exhibition match in Hong Kong. On February 4th, Messi sat on the cold bench in a sportswear throughout the whole process, and he didn't wear the jersey for a second. He did not interact closely with the audience, and even turned down the opportunity to shake hands with the chief executive.
This sudden change made the organizer Huo Qigang blow up his lungs, and he spoke out many times to denounce the law, and the fans also felt half cold. At that time, Messi's team explained that they could not play because of injury problems. But in the Japanese exhibition match that followed, Messi not only played hotly, but also took photos with Japan's famous "nightclub cowherd", which made people a little confused.
This turmoil not only affected the sports world, but also made China's liquor brand, Chishuihe Liquor, innocently lying down. The brand spent tens of millions of dollars to invite Messi to be the spokesperson, full of joy and wanted to use Messi's popularity to hype the brand, but was disgraced by Messi's performance in Hong Kong. Many mainland netizens were indignant and went to Chishuihe Liquor to leave a message under Weibo, clamoring for the brand to terminate the contract with Messi quickly, and even threatened not to buy this brand of wine again.
Fast forward to August 1, 2023, when Messi suddenly announced on Weibo that he had become the brand spokesperson of Chishuihe Liquor, which made everyone's jaws drop. The official blog of Chishui River Liquor also immediately came out to echo, taking the opportunity to promote its own pure sauce-flavored liquor. Later, someone broke the news that Messi's endorsement authorization for Chishui River Wine mainly includes the right to use the portrait, and the endorsement fee is as high as more than 20 million yuan a year. Many people began to wonder if such a little-known liquor brand could really afford such a high endorsement fee?
It turned out that behind Chishuihe wine was the Shandong fertilizer tycoon Stanley Group. Gao Jinhua, the largest shareholder of Chishui River Liquor, holds 99% of the shares. And he is the son of Stanley's founder Gao Wenban, and in 2022, his ** father will become the actual controller and chairman of Stanley. Their family is a wealthy party in Linyi, Shandong, and the "2021 Hurun Report" shows that the Gao Wenban family has a net worth of 4.2 billion, ranking firmly in the richest position. In 2021, Gao Jinhua began to get involved in the soy sauce and wine industry, and set the ambition of "doing it 20 billion in five years".
He used the real estate development of Shandong Stanley Jingcheng under his control and Guizhou Yongheng Liquor and Xishui County to reach a cooperation agreement to jointly promote the "10,000-ton sauce wine technical transformation and expansion project". According to the plan, the project will invest 5 billion yuan, cover an area of more than 600 acres, and prepare an annual output of 12,000 tons of soy sauce wine, 25,000 tons of koji, and a storage capacity of 60,000 tons. However, the financial report for the first quarter of 2023 shows that Zhongchi Liquor's revenue is only 278490,000, net profit negative 120540,000, which is still dozens of marathons away from the goal of "20 billion in five years".
How can you quickly build brand awareness? Gao Jinhua still thought of the old way - to find a big-name celebrity endorsement. You must know that Stanley Fertilizer has invited stars such as Chen Peisi and Wang Baoqiang to stand on the platform before, and the effect is good. This time selling wine across the industry, Gao Jinhua still continued the road of star effect and found the international football superstar Messi. For a time, Chishui River Wine soared in popularity with the topic of Messi's endorsement and entered the public eye.
However, the liquor track selected by Chishui River Liquor is not easy to run, coupled with the lack of deep accumulation in liquor production, the brand basically does not mention the product development process, business philosophy and brewing process in the official publicity, as if it is all pointing to Messi's face to support the scene. The problem is that Messi's image of drinking liquor doesn't match at all, and it's not as logical as his endorsement of sneakers and jerseys.
Now, there is another "debut door" incident, Chishuihe Liquor has also removed its products from the shelves during the Spring Festival liquor sales season, and how to return the 5 billion investment invested by Gao Jinhua also needs to be marked with a question mark.