Research on the Dissemination Strategy of TV Advertisements for Sports Events, Taking CCTV’s Advertisements for the Beijing and London Olympic Games as Examples ()
1. Introduction
Sports communication originated in the 1980s. Its background is the tide of sports entertainment and the sports industry revolution. (Pérez-Gladish, I. Gonzalez, A. Bilbao-Terol, M. Arenas-Parra, 2010) [1]. In this period, mass sports communication with TV event relay as the main body directly promoted the popularization, industrialization and informatization of sports. The interaction between spectator sports and mass media, which takes all kinds of sports and the Olympic Games as the main body, promotes the transformation of sports from traditional personal health undertakings to sports communication and sports consumption, and makes sports news, sports events broadcasting and sports programs become important contents of mass communication. Academic research on sports communication began at this time. (Schwarz, E.C., Hunter, J.D. and Lafleur, A., 2017) [2]. Sports communication refers to an information communication activity with sports as the media and content. In the process of sports communication, information content and media technology are indispensable communication content and means (Y Peng, 2020) [3]. Sports communication mainly has two kinds of functions: Economic and cultural. The economic function mainly means that sports communication can promote the development of the sports industry and promote the sales of products. Cultural function mainly includes two aspects: inheriting and spreading sports culture and expanding its influence. With the increase in the dissemination and inheritance of sports, sports culture will be better implemented. Enterprises can also use the “healthy gene” of sports to inherit their brand image and form completely differentiated cognition from competitors in the minds of consumers (Pérez-Gladish, I. Gonzalez, A. Bilbao-Terol, M. Arenas-Parra, 2010) [1]
This essay takes CCTV advertisements during Beijing and London Olympic Games as examples to analyze the communication process and its effect in detail and it aims to explore the theories related to sports communication and provide rich research materials for other scholars.
2. Communication Theories
The research on the law and characteristics of sports communication is one of the basic categories of sports communication theory and also the starting point and basis of the research on sports communication. Sports communication includes sports media communication, interpersonal communication, small group communication, sports organization communication, sports public relations, etc. Sports public relations refer to new areas such as sports advertising and sports social media. Sports communication plays a vital role in the sustainable development of the sports industry (PM Pedersen, P Laucella, A Geurin, E Kian, 2020) [4]. First of all, sports, as a cultural behavior peculiar to human beings, are essentially the formation and flow of information about health and entertainment in human society. With the development of media and technological progress, this kind of specific information expands in the process of communication, showing a powerful function of communication. The nature of sports communication is determined by human sociality. There are essential differences between human sports and the instinctive activities of animals. It is the product of human socialization and the unique cultural activity of human beings. Animals can only rely on their natural biological genetic instincts to continue and communicate. As a human social culture, sports can realize conscious social communication activities through a symbol system. From the point of sports development, whether the original humans all kinds of sports skills and skills teaching, or the creation of the ancient world history on all kinds of sports culture, inherit and spread, until the physical education, sports competition of modern society and the development of all kinds of fitness entertainment activities, cannot be someone’s isolation behavior, and can only be the creation of social, sharing, inheriting and communication process. Even the most individual activities in human sports, such as walking, running, jumping, throwing, throwing and climbing, are fundamentally different from the instinctive activities of animals. Because these activities are the result of the inheritance and acquisition of human society and culture, it is in this sense that sports can be regarded as communication. Communication is a prerequisite for the generation, development, evolution and spread of sports. Without communication, there is no sport.
In addition, according to the nature of communication content, communication is usually divided into physical communication, biological communication and social communication, among which social communication is divided into political communication, economical communication and cultural communication. Because sports is essentially human society culture in a relatively independent system and, therefore, sports spread on the properties is a transmission type, cultural transmission below reflects the general law of cultural transmission, and thought, education, religion, art, literature, journalism, public opinion spread, advertising, technology, entertainment, etc. But in practice, sports communication is an open system. In different degrees, it is interwoven and overlapping with the communication activities of politics, economy, education, news, art, entertainment and science and technology respectively. In other words, sports communication often has the communication functions of education, entertainment, economy and politics. In addition, communication generally classifies human communication into five categories, namely, self-communication, interpersonal communication, group communication, organizational communication and mass communication, from the perspective of communication scope and level. Among them, self-communication belongs to non-social communication, while the latter 4 belong to social communication. These five kinds of communication are reflected and embodied in sports communication to varying degrees and at the same time show certain characteristics of communication.
According to modern communication theory, communication is not only a process, but also a system. Sports communication is the communication activities around sports and it also constitutes a communication system. Such a communication system maintains the information flow between sports and the external social system and promotes sports to become a highly open social and cultural system. According to the thought of system theory, an open system is a dissipative structure, which depends on the continuous exchange and dissipation of energy and matter with the outside world in the opening to the environment so as to maintain the balance of the system and maintain the existence and operation of the system. In this sense, communication is the basic premise to maintain the existence and development of sports as a social and cultural system. On the contrary, if the information exchange and interaction between sports and the social environment are blocked or isolated for some reason, it will become a closed system and cannot obtain the energy and power for development, and its system balance will be difficult to maintain. The obvious manifestation is the decline of sports cause. Sports and the spread of the highly dependent on relationship performance especially in the modern sports, such as the Chinese football professional league is experiencing rapid decline after a brief climax in the 1990s; one of the important reasons is due to the black whistle, match-fixing, gambling, and managers’ error, the football league and the external social environment―fans, enterprises gradually alienated, media, public opinion, etc. From the perspective of communication, this is the failure of information interaction and energy exchange between the football league as a social subsystem and the external social system. Such a gradually closed system would decline because of the depletion of energy and the loss of power.
Finally, communication studies divide communication symbols into two categories: verbal symbols and non-verbal symbols. The former is mainly composed of language and character symbols, while the latter refers to the symbols that are not expressed by language and characters, such as actions, gestures, expressions, intonation, colors and signs. One of the important communication characteristics of sports is to use of the non-verbal symbol of body movement as the medium to realize the communication and interaction between people of different languages, nationalities, countries and cultures. For example, no matter which country, nationality or language a sportsman comes from, he can participate in sports competitions and sports activities as long as he abides by certain rules. He can compete with other sportsmen on the same field and communicate with them. This is because, compared with linguistic signs, non-linguistic signs are easier to form a common meaning space between the transmitter and receiver and easier to overcome human language barriers and cultural differences so as to realize interpersonal communication and interaction. Because of the communication characteristics of the non-verbal symbol of sports, no matter how complex the modern sports are, no matter how advanced the facilities and equipment are, the essence of modern sports must be the regular physical movement of human beings. This is why modern sports can become the “world language” of modern human beings.
3. The Rationale for the Selection
The Olympic Games is a large-scale sports event that attracts worldwide attention. It has a strong appeal and influence all over the world, and it also has a large audience. By broadcasting Olympic sports events, TV stations can not only attract the attention of the public and increase channel ratings but also attract advertisers to place advertisements. At the same time, companies can take advantage of the opportunity of the Olympics and actively place advertisements on TV stations to greatly enhance their brand value. This article adopts the literature method, case study method and investigation method, and takes the sports event advertisements of China Central Television of the Beijing and London Olympic Games as the research object.
As an eye-catching event, TV sports events have increasingly become a highly influential communication platform. Combining its characteristics to analyze and research TV sports advertising marketing strategies will help us to re-examine the promotion of TV sports advertising. Effectiveness and marketing value. This paper takes CCTV’s sports event advertisements during the Beijing and London Olympic Games as an analysis sample, and considers from the perspectives of communication and marketing, and analyzes CCTV’s sports event TV advertising marketing strategy research and some corporate advertising marketing strategies in detail. What’s more important is that this article also pointed out some problems in the advertising communication of CCTV and enterprises, and proposed solutions. In order to better exert the marketing value of sports TV advertising, advertisers and TV stations should seriously consider how to successfully carry out the marketing of sports TV advertising during the Olympic Games.
For advertisers, by carefully studying the advertising strategies during the Olympics, companies can better grasp the business opportunities of the Olympics. At the same time, this kind of research also made them further realize that not all products are suitable for advertising and marketing with sports events as the carrier during the advertising and marketing of major events, and they must also consider the positioning of the company and the characteristics of the products to abuse sports star endorsements, etc. Sports marketing will be affected by political climate, legal climate, economic climate, cultural environment, moral climate and other factors. The competition in the sports market is very cruel and fierce (Bradbury, T. and O’Boyle, I. eds., 2017) [5]. In the face of fierce market competition, advertisers should conduct in-depth research on the target market of products and the characteristics of consumer groups, and formulate scientific and reasonable advertising and marketing strategies based on the characteristics of their products. Companies should also focus on shaping their own brand culture, and establishing a clear and stable brand image in the hearts of the audience through the promotion of sports event advertisements. When establishing the sports brand image, it is very important to carry out effective media publicity and maintain direct communication with customers. From the perspective of new media, most people now use social media such as Instagram and Twitter. These new media platforms can become important ways of sports marketing and high target visual advertising channels. And direct and effective communication with customers is also conducive to the timely adjustment of sports marketing strategies (LO Siguencia, D Herman, et al., 2017) [6]. As coaches, public relations professionals, athletes, sports media figures, fans and other sports stakeholders have expanded their use of social media; social media has an increasing impact on the sports industry (Jimmy Sanderson, 2016) [7]. From the perspective of the TV station (or channel), by studying the TV broadcasts of sports events during the Olympics, they can learn to proactively propose their own program schedules to advertisers, and constantly develop new TVs based on the progress of the events. Festivals, and find the best broadcast time of sports events TV commercials, so as to achieve the predetermined goals of advertising and marketing. In addition, TV stations should be good at linking advertisements, corporate cultural connotations with sports events closely, and build a powerful communication platform for the establishment of corporate brand images.
Therefore, when advertising in Beijing and London, we need to take into account the advantages of the host country and CCTV itself, and promote and support more national enterprises in China. In foreign countries, it is necessary to promote organized enterprises to go out and develop more Chinese sports elements.
4. Discussion
With the development of marketing practice, the relationship between sports, media and society is becoming closer. The relationship between marketing and consumers will affect consumers’ loyalty, sales and costs (Kim & Trail, 2010) [8]. In the foreseeable future, advertising will play an extremely important role in the expansion of the global economy and the post-modern promotion culture (Wernick, 1991) [9]. Beijing and London two Olympic Games, CCTV advertising marketing different characteristics are mainly reflected in the following two aspects. First of all, as the host country of the Beijing Olympic Games, China Central Television (CCTV), as a national television media, has unparalleled advantages in broadcasting the Olympic Games and other aspects. During the Olympic Games, CCTV made a historical use of seven channels to present the Olympic Games to viewers in all aspects, including four open channel channels, 1, 2, 5 and 7, one HD channel and two pay channels. In addition, CCTV’s international and Chinese opera channels are also involved in broadcasting and covering Olympic events. However, for the London Olympic Games, China is no longer the host country, and CCTV is still the exclusive transfer agency in mainland China. But the number of channels is smaller than for the Beijing Games, with only four open circuit channels and the use of new media such as China’s Network television. Secondly, in the two Olympic Games, CCTV in the key Olympic project marketing, there are some differences. Beijing Olympic Games is held in China, China is the host country, and CCTV as a national television media can carry out a variety of forms of Olympic project marketing, such as the Olympic Countdown 500 days special program, the Olympic countdown one year anniversary special program, the Olympic torch release and relay activities and other Olympic projects. But in The London Olympic Games, CCTV Olympic day in the advertising marketing will be relatively simple, only Anta’s “London action” and a few Olympic events. The main reason why CCTV used different advertising marketing strategies in the two Olympic Games is that China and Britain have different regional cultures, and the audiences are deeply influenced by their different traditional cultures, leading to different psychological acceptance habits. What’s more, China is the host country of the Beijing Olympic Games, and CCTV broadcasts the Olympic Games as the host. At the London Olympics, CCTV is the guest’s identity, so the strategy will be different.
The marketing of TV advertisements for sports events should follow the principles of relevance, appreciation and proximity. For China central television, or for many enterprises both at home and abroad, to the body have much TV advertising and marketing success, you must avoid these three principles because only the advertising and sports events are relevant, but also has a very strong appreciation sex is also close to its audience, and fell in love to make the audience remember the advertisement, and then achieve the ideal effect. In the process of advertising marketing for large-scale sports events such as the Olympic Games, CCTV should flexibly develop various forms of advertising according to customers’ needs, especially the packaged form of advertising which is more and more accepted by many enterprises. But CCTV also wants to prevent a move towards stereotypes. Therefore, CCTV can make continuous exploration and innovation in package advertisements to adapt to the changing advertising environment. In addition, CCTV should actively promote its own brand value, study its own advertising price strategy, and constantly innovate advertising price pricing strategy, so as to keep the price at a scientific, reasonable and fair level. For enterprises, in order to succeed in the marketing of sports TV advertisements, in addition to the correct positioning of their brands, the use of advertising star strategy and emotional appeal strategy, they should also learn to use the strategy of “atypical advertising marketing”. For big sporting events like the Olympics, the bar for sponsorship is getting higher and higher. For most enterprises, it is not necessary and impossible to become sponsors of the Olympic Games. They can achieve success through the strategy of “atypical advertising marketing”.
5. Conclusions
As the main body of sports promotion, the publicity of CCTV shows more official authority and shows more of the will of the country, often with a certain political nature. In order to further highlight the Olympic concept of “faster, higher and stronger” in the Olympic spirit, we must deepen reform and discussion.
Overall, sports itself has a media function. As a carrier and platform of communication in human society, it plays a role in human communication and interaction. The Quadrennial Olympic Games is a great platform for athletes and people from different countries and regions to exchange feelings, enhance mutual understanding and develop a friendship through sports. Sports is the content of the communication means that for all kinds of media, especially modern mass media, sports is a kind of content of communication. In modern mass media, whether traditional books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television or emerging network media, sports is one of the important communication content. Due to the great social influence of modern sports, mass media attract the audience through sports reports or publishing sports content, and at the same time, play a role in the publicity and dissemination of sports. The dual role of sports as both media and content makes sports play an important role in human communication and interaction in modern society.