Blog

Courtesy: Ray Ally, Landor Associates

With the Olympics well into its second week, the race among sporting brands is nearing the final bend. Li Ning’s spectacular, ultimate ambush of the opening ceremony is now a distant memory, and the battle is really only between the two giants: Nike and Adidas.

Nike, which has dressed the Chinese athletes, and Adidas, the official Olympics sponsor, are currently neck and neck. But it looks to me like things are changing. Adidas could be striding ahead by its association with the many gold-winning Chinese athletes being photographed on Olympic podiums.

China’s ambition to win the most gold medals on its home turf has been no secret for years. They have been planning this since they won the right to host the games back in 2001. However, I don’t expect they believed they would be doing quite so well.

To support its positioning, Adidas erected a number of Chinese medal counters around the city. The counters update electronically every time China gets a medal. These are located at prime shopping locations around the city and outside its flagship store in Sanlitun, Beijing.

Interest in China’s medal tally is so important to Beijingers that many office buildings have their own home-made medal counters in their lobbies, updated by hand by the reception staff. Talk at lunchtime and around the office water cooler is always about "how many gold medals do we have now?"

Last weekend I went to the largest Adidas store in the world, which just happens to be in Beijing. It is a four floor, 3,000 sqm brand centre which, for the first time, has all the Adidas divisions under one roof: sport performance, sport style, originals, and Y-3.

The place was so packed that I could hardly get inside as locals and tourists alike bought up everything Olympic in sight. Replica China shirts and tracksuits worn by the Chinese athletes on medals podiums had almost sold out. Similarly, anything with the Beijing logo or Olympic sporting icons was also in short supply. It was a shopping frenzy that reminded me of Oxford Street in London during Christmas sales.

If what I witnessed in Beijing is also taking place in Adidas' other 5,000 stores in China, then Adidas is looking to be a sure thing—as is China—to win the most gold from the Beijing Games.