On average, one NBA player lands every 72 hours. What is the Chinese tour rewriting this summer?

In the past summer, an average of one NBA player lands in China every 72 hours and starts his own itinerary.

Incomplete statistics, since early July, at least 22 NBA players have visited China publicly. Without duplication, more than 27 cities have been visited.

Of course, except for some stars who come to China only in private and do not participate in public commercial activities (such as Wenban Yama), and a few "Pinduoduo style" cases where multiple organizers share the itinerary (such as Leonard), most of the stars' Chinese tours are still dominated by signing brands, and the observations in this article will mainly revolve around such cases.

stars are in the front, followed by the brand and sponsors, each showing their own skills.

Based on the participation, bystander, and communication in the past three months, we have tried to sort out the details scattered around the world, extract some observations from this summer, and think with everyone.

From the moment of landing and picking up the plane, the organizers wanted to use every second to maximize the profits.

However, in the eyes of fans, the most attractive part is always the moment when the stars step onto the basketball court. For brands, their own event IP has become the best scenario to undertake this expectation.

After years or even decades of accumulation, the event IP of major brands has long formed awareness at the public level and is bound to the brand itself very strongly. By allowing players to enter these scenarios to carry out activities, the brand can not only make the process and presentation more systematic, but also produce a large number of content assets with a strong brand mark for secondary communication and even long-term reuse.

Today, when short videos have become the main fermentation base for traffic, although the momentum of grassroots basketball is not as popular as a few years ago, it is still an important export for content distribution.

For brands with independent grassroots events, this is an advantage that must be seized - Adidas star Edwards appeared in the "Fighting" arena as a successor; Butler listened to "Great Show" in Li Ning's "Anti-Terror" finals; Jokic also took the stage of "Touchdown" to help grassroots players perform.

Source: @theanthonyedwards_

As media relations and communication logic are constantly being reconstructed, today's basketball experts not only participate as guests, but also have an extra role as communicator.

Brands like to use their influence to communicate, and they like it for tens of millions of views. Although they continue to raise the threshold for expectations for the communication effect, the volume of sound is always intuitive and beautiful when it comes to closing the case. There is no reason to ignore it.

If grassroots basketball provides traffic explosion points and instant communication, then systematic events for young players carry a longer-term brand narrative.

Nike's "makes a name for himself" played an extremely important role in the itinerary between Morant and James. The event also invited the New York street basketball power "NY vs NY" to the Veritas Academy school team, which had just joined by Chinese basketball star Zhang Boyuan, to give Chinese young talents the opportunity to communicate with top foreign players.

Curry China Tour adopted the model of star training camp, but the underlying logic is no different. It also creates opportunities for young Chinese and foreign players to exchange and exchange under the witness and guidance of stars.

We found in our observation that compared with the stylized business link, stars often take the initiative to invest real emotions and energy when facing young players. Because of this, such scenes often capture the most infectious interactive moments and become the trump card for brands to enhance the texture of the event and convey the main idea.

It must be admitted that the NBA star tour in China is not a new thing. The underlying logic is still the marketing action of brands using the help of stars to connect consumer groups. A similar model framework has been running for more than ten years and is still effective.

The difference is that many brands are also finding "comfort solutions" based on their respective stage goals, trying to make it look fresh enough while continuing the old model.

Another path worth observing this summer is the ingenuity and choices of major brands in star combination and itinerary design.

superstars create ballast-like explosive points, while new generation players carry the brand's future narrative and freshness. But under a similar framework, different brands have shown completely different ideas in destination selection, scene design and narrative strategies.

A very interesting phenomenon: this summer, the number of destinations arranged by domestic brands for stars is generally much higher than that of international brands.

Domestic brands are often more willing to let stars go to more cities and maximize their coverage - not only Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but also the arenas, shopping malls, and even communities in second- and third-tier cities have become destinations.

This approach has increased the difficulty of driving on the surface, but the logic behind it is clear. By allowing NBA superstars to appear in those sinking markets that are not fully accessible, brands can amplify their presence in a short period of time and achieve more in-depth reach.

International brands are more restrained - rather than spreading their itinerary, they are more inclined to compress the links into a few key sites, and to spend resources and budgets on stage construction and content production. This choice is highly consistent with the communication logic in the social media era: creating a scenario that best represents the brand, so that the content has high replication and high communication power.

This contrast has also been amplified in the successive exposure of social media.

From the personal popularity of stars, to the immersive experience of the scene, to the major product launch, these links have jointly spliced ​​a clear picture - the Chinese market is no longer just an "important overseas site", but has become a front stage that directly affects decision-making in the value chain of the basketball industry.