Erica Kerner, Director of Beijing 2008 Olympic Program for adidas China tells us about the company's sponsorship of the Olympic games and its brand strategy of being China's leading sportswear company with over 4,000 retail stores in China by 2008.

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About Erica kerner

Erica Kerner is Director of adidas’ Beijing 2008 Olympics Program. In this role, she is responsible for all aspects of adidas’ Beijing Olympic marketing, sponsorship, licensing and business development activities. Erica works directly with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ensure that the 2008 Games are a success, both for adidas and for China and its athletes.

In a country where the Olympics represents a historic milestone, Erica has played an integral role in building the adidas brand into one of the most recognized partners of China’s upcoming games. Starting with the successful negotiation and signing of both the Olympic sponsorship and licensing agreements, Erica has established strong consumer awareness and appreciation of the adidas Olympic sponsorship.

Her outstanding success in promoting adidas won her global praise, culminating in her commendation by AdvertisingAge Global as a “Woman to Watch” in 2006. Erica and her team were also the recipients of the CCTV sports marketing achievement award for the “Best Campaign to Launch the Olympic Partnership.”

Prior to joining adidas, Erica worked as Director of Marketing and Communications for Special Olympics East Asia. In this role she helped develop their China marketing, branding and communications strategies in the fastest growing market for Special Olympics participation in the world. Erica started her marketing and advertising career in 1989 at Bates Advertising in Taiwan working on multinational clients.

Erica has been involved in marketing in Greater China for more than fifteen years, including over eight years in sports apparel marketing. She has lived and worked in Taipei, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and now Beijing.

A native of Armonk, New York, Erica is an avid scuba diver and a former USA nationally ranked tennis player. She graduated cum laude from Tufts University with a degree in international relations.

The following is a transcript of this interview:

Erica Kerner, Director of Beijing 2008 Olympic Program for adidas China tells us about the company's sponsorship of the Olympic Games and its brand strategy of being China's leading sportswear company with over 4,000 retail stores in China by 2008.

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Let’s think about it for a second and let that sink in. We’re thinking about the world’s biggest and most high profile sporting event being held for the first time in the world’s biggest country, which is of course China. For a global company looking to one-up their competition when it comes to brand recognition the opportunity associated with being named an official sponsor and partner of the Beijing 2008 Olympics is not lost on a company such as Adidas. I am very honored and excited to welcome to The China Business Show today, Erica Kerner, the Director of The Beijing 2008 Olympics Program for Adidas China. Erica has over 15 years of marketing experience in Greater China and is a person whom Global Advertising Age called “a woman to watch” in 2006. And she happens to be a personal and dear friend of mine from my years of living and working in China as well.

CHRISTINE LU: Erica welcome to The China Business Show.

ERICA KERNER: Hi Christine, Thanks for having me.

CHRISTINE LU: Thanks for joining us today. Before we talk about the Beijing Olympics specifically could you give us a brief overview of Adidas China?

ERICA KERNER: Sure. Adidas has been in the China market since the early 90’s. We are one of the first sporting goods brands internationally to enter this market. We have I think about 800 staff in China for the adidas group, being the adidas brand, the Taylor Made brand and the Reebok brand. So altogether about 800 staff. For the adidas brand we’re in about 300 cities in China right now. Moving out to hopefully cover all 660 cities in the coming future. We’ve got about 3,000 retail stores and those would be adidas only retail stores.

CHRISTINE LU: 3,000 stores?

ERICA KERNER: 3,000 stores, and we’re opening two stores a day including weekends.

CHRISTINE LU: I heard an article that your goal, in2008, by the time the Olympics opens, is to have 4,000 stores.

ERICA KERNER: Exactly. That’s really exciting for us.

CHRISTINE LU: Keeps you guys busy I’m sure.

ERICA KERNER: Our business is growing really quickly; I think it’s our fastest growing market in the world, so it’s an exciting place to be.

CHRISTINE LU: As the Director of the Beijing 2008 Olympic program for Adidas China, can you tell us more about exactly what you do and what you’re responsible for?

Sure, my role and my team are responsible for our sponsorship, our partnership with the Beijing Olympic Games, so I look after everything from the negotiation that we did with the Beijing Olympic Committee, all of our relationship with both the Beijing Olympic Committee which is called BOCOG, and the IOC. I look after all of our marketing programs around the Olympic Games: sales programs, licensing programs – we’re also an official licensee – athlete relations, pretty much anything you can think of that would be related to the Olympic Games. The sponsorship would go through myself and my team.

CHRISTINE LU: Now being an official sponsor of the Beijing Olympics is undoubtedly an expensive commitment. What are some of the company’s key objectives in China in regards to this sponsorship?

ERICA KERNER: When we were awarded the sponsorship we sat down and looked at our objectives for the event and we came up really with three different objectives. One’s a financial target objective as you can imagine. The second is a consumer objective, so looking at making sure that all of our brand tracking numbers go up because of this sponsorship. So our consumer loyalty, our purchase intent numbers. And then the third target is based around our stakeholders. So we really want to be the partner of choice with our retailers, with our sports federations and athletes, with any of our business partners or government officials. So really using this partnership to become more of a partner of choice with the people and the businesses that we work with, We have targets in all three of those areas that we’ll use to judge the sponsorship.

CHRISTINE LU: Taking a step back, in general, because you’re right there on the ground and it’s been two years since I’ve been living and working there. With the summer games just over a year away, what’s the current buzz like? Can you paint us a picture of what it’s like in China in general, or in Beijing and Shanghai, how it’s impacted everyday life for businesses, for society, just what’s going on there?

ERICA KERNER: This really is a nation-changing event; I sometimes refer to it as a Chan coming out party. Because this is a chance for China to show the world that they’ve arrived. Not that they’re arriving, but that they’ve arrived. And so the buzz is, this far out, “bigger than any other Olympic Games.” You said it in the set-up. I mean this is going to be the largest, most commercial games the world has ever seen. And the buzz is fantastic. If you’re in Beijing you’ll see the Olympics being advertised everywhere. There are about 50 partners of the Olympic Games and they're all using the Olympic Games in their advertising.

CHRISTINE LU: It goes down to these funny articles I read about the taxi drivers in Beijing, how they’re all being required to brush up on their English.

ERICA KERNER: It’s true, and they’re practicing. You get in a taxi and they all want to practice their English, and the government is doing a lot of programs as well. The eleventh of every month is now “queuing day”, lining up day, really to encourage the people of Beijing to be more civil in the way they line up. It really is the nation’s event, it’s not just Beijing’s event.

CHRISTINE LU: So even though it’s a year away I bet you can’t drive a block without seeing a billboard or an ad on a bus related to it.

ERICA KERNER: Absolutely, for me – today is 422 days out – and the reason I know that is that all over the city they have countdown clocks. And to be honest I try not to look at them because I get panicked every time I see it.

CHRISTINE LU: Now what are some really great initiatives specific to adidas, or even events you’re putting on to capitalize on the brand building opportunity for being an official sponsor – cause I know there are a lot of companies out there trying to jump on the bandwagon but you guys being the official sponsor, what is it you guys are doing right now?

ERICA KERNER: In our category it’s a little bit different than the other sponsors because we are a sports brand, so we would be involved in the Olympic Games even if we weren’t a sponsor. My position for it in fact was hired before we were awarded the partnership. We would be marketing around the games anyway. So for us, to start an Olympics campaign per se, we’ll wait until we get closer to the games, because everything we do is related to sport. Everything we do can use the joint Olympics adidas logo and it makes sense. A McDonald’s needs to have an official Olympics campaign for consumers to see them as an official partner.

So we’re right now working on our campaign. We’ve got some fantastic advertising that we’re in pre-production for, that is going to be ground-breaking and hopefully award-winning. We’ll be looking at a full 360 degree integrated campaign, so, working with our athletes, all media, new media will play a very big part in the campaign because I’m sure you’ve talked about it in previous shows. New media in China is a real industry that’s developing because Chinese adapt new media a lot quicker than in Europe or the United States.

CHRISTINE LU: Can you give us an example of what constitutes new media?

ERICA KERNER: Well new media would be anything obviously from mobile technologies so mobile phones, to all the internet technologies, digital television, push technologies.

CHRISTINE LU: Do they still have those TV’s in the back of the taxis? And the buses.

ERICA KERNER: Yeah, they do. And they’ve even expanded so now there’s TV’s in elevators, TV’s in the subways. So consumers are hit by media in China from every direction.

CHRISTINE LU: So this is interesting. Adidas has 3,000 stores right now with 4,000 planned by 2008, but it’s no secret that competition is fierce in your market with Nike I’m assuming being your biggest competitor? Correct

ERICA KERNER: Yes.

CHRISTINE LU: What ways does adidas differentiate from Nike in the minds of the Chinese consumer? How does adidas want the Chinese consumer to view it, say, compared to Nike?

ERICA KERNER: Well I’ll talk in the Olympic context because that’s what I’m working on, we see ourselves as the Olympic brand. We have been involved in the Olympic Games since 1928 when athletes first wore spikes developed by our founder, Adi Dassler. So we have 80 years of history in the Olympic Games and have supported more athletes and teams than any other brand. That’s something we really want the Chinese consumer to understand. Our competition doesn't have that history and heritage in the same way that we do. So being the Olympic sponsor and having the Olympic partnership gives us a chance to educate consumers and show consumers that. China is a fierce market, as you said, and there are more brands than just us and our major competitor. There’s major local brands as well. I think the key to us is being the most inspirational and innovative brand at the Olympic Games. Not just in our category, but of all the Olympic partners. So we’re looking at the Olympic partners as well, almost as competition. If you look back at the World Cup, which got a lot of coverage in the United States, it certainly got a lot of coverage in China, with fans staying up all night to watch games because with the time difference the games were in the middle of the night. Adidas was an official partner of that and after the games we came out as the most remembered partner. So that’s really our goal in these games as well, is after the games to be the most memorable partner.

We’re almost out of time. I look forward to checking back in with you throughout the year and give us updates.

I’d love to,

And for those who have a question feel free to visit our blog thechinabusinessshow.com and click on the Contact Us button. Thanks for listening, I’m Christine Lu.

You’re listening to Entrepreneur magazine’s China Business Show, secrets to doing business in China.

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