Spending Spree
They're young. They have money to burn. And the race is on to win them as customers
Gong Lei is 25 and goes by Ken. He is tall, with spiky dyed brown hair, and sports baggy jeans and Akademiks sneakers. When he was younger, he says, he saved all his money to buy Nike sneakers and clothing. "My parents gave me 500 yuan [$62] a month for school, to cover food, transportation, everything," he recalls. "I ate instant noodles every day and bought Nike shoes instead. I couldn't get enough of them." A basketball fanatic, Ken would troll the Web for anything basketball related, and he came across U.S.-made video clips of street basketball players. He liked the style so much that he started reaching out online to others who might be interested in it. Four years ago, Ken started a website called China Street Basketball Association, with links to pages for different cities, as well as rap videos and street basketball videos from the United States, available for free downloading. The site now has 230,000 members, claims 50,000 to 60,000 hits per day, and has 40 "signed" players who are doing a cross-country tour of 20 Chinese cities. Ken has 30 pairs of sneakers at home, all made by western companies that have sponsored tournaments in China.
Showing off. In the middle of a residential Shanghai neighborhood, a bunch of teenagers gather on a dusty basketball court. They're wearing yellow jerseys, and some have cornrows and rhinestone studs in their ears. One dribbles between his legs and shoots a basket, as a television camera follows him around. Kids gather at the edge of the court and gawk in admiration. The teenagers are part of a street basketball team put together online, and they're shooting a music video for a Chinese rap singer. "Chinese kids want to start expressing themselves, and street ball lets them show off," says Ken. "So many brands want to do business with us now, because we have so many members on our website. Even Chinese companies selling bathroom fixtures are starting to sponsor street basketball tournaments these days."
Last year, the tournament was sponsored by Electronic Arts, the biggest video-game publisher in the world. The company wanted to break into the China market with its street basketball video game, so it sponsored three-on-three street basketball tournaments, complete with break-dancing contests and video games on the sidelines. The company hired cute girls wearing "EA" baseball caps to play the video games with the boys who came to watch.
Coca-Cola has used similar marketing tie-ins. It helped launch the online video game World of Warcraft by sponsoring carnivals in which consumers could play out some of the video-game tasks in real life. Last year, over 20,000 kids attended during a two-day carnival in Shanghai. "Chinese youth are yearning for their own identity," says Ilan Sobel, Coke's vice president for strategic marketing in greater China. "They are going from a collectivist society to having a new freedom. We are constantly looking for new ways to inspire them." This year, Coke is moving away from traditional television ads to rely more on its online platform, iCoke, where consumers can win their own 3-D avatars that they can then dress up in Coca-Cola clothing and accessories.
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