Chapter 27 Chapter 9 Sunrise in the East

Run like the breeze, travel freely across the vast wilderness, skim over the distant mountains in the sunset, and run freely in the infinitely wide world... When Xu Wei sang this song, the famous Ethiopian long-distance runner Trosa appeared on the screen with a smile The shot of running in the vast world, he ran across the Great Wall, Tibet, forests and fields, a little Chinese girl hopscotch, and a boy riding a bicycle on the street... This is a very graphic joy Journey, relaxed and free, is exactly the feeling of running freely with "traveling freely like the breeze".People who have seen this ad will be more or less impressed - "I want to run too".At the end of the advertisement, the name of the product appeared: "Li Ning, the fourth-generation running shoes of Chasing the Wind". The words "Running without rules" are printed at the end of the advertisement, which is a kind of sports attitude advocated by "Li Ning".

Xu Wei, a Chinese pop singer with a melancholic temperament, tailored a commercial song for Li Ning's latest "Wind Series" running shoes in 2007 - "Feng Xing", which became a widely popular song in the future. In May 2007, Li Ning's "Wind Running Shoes" advertisement, which used this song as background music, received wide acclaim once it was aired. Xu Wei's very Chinese and popular music style has certain points of agreement with Li Ning's "Chasing the Wind" positioning, which led to this cooperation.In order to highlight the cultural characteristics expected by "Li Ning", the arrangement of this song even added folk music-style flute performance.This ad from Leo Burnett, an internationally renowned advertising company, is very "Chinese" but even more "cool".

This is what "Li Ning" wants. Zhang Zhiyong knows that the feeling of belonging to "Li Ning" that he has been looking for since 2005 is even stronger now. When "Li Ning" started to change bravely and naively, when it was confused about its own progress process, when it continued to explore its own product path, in fact, a more important change was quietly taking place within the company. What is differentiation?How to be more professional?How to be more fashionable?How to change "Li Ning"?This is the problem Zhang Zhiyong and his team have been trying to solve, and all their attempts revolve around it.

The answer is: oriental elements. A pair of shoes with a strange shape back to 2005.The executives and designers of Li Ning Company are considering such a question: how to make the products more Chinese and more international at the same time?So, they decided to use a more Chinese way to express their connotations—adding Chinese elements to their products. After countless experiments, Zheng Yongxian, a young designer of the basketball special team, finally designed a surprising basketball shoe.The design of this shoe is inspired by the armor of warriors in the Warring States Period, so the upper design is mainly to imitate the armor piece, and the pattern on the buckle of the shoe body is the dragon pattern, which is also an ancient pattern drawn from ancient bronzes.A circle of black patent leather is added to the shoe mouth, adding a modern touch.In order to match the oriental elements, after careful consideration, Zheng Yongxian decided to adopt the shape of ancient Chinese bronzes for the soles, and gave up the commonly used herringbone pattern.The final effect is that the pattern of the sole is a larger scroll pattern, and a little wave pattern is used at the toe and heel for anti-slip.After this shoe becomes a finished product, the oriental overall feeling immediately gives people a great visual impact, and the overall effect is simple and simple, revealing a sense of domineering.

This well-designed shoe named "Flying Armor" had the highest technical content among the "Li Ning" shoes at that time. The built-in Bounce in the forefoot of the sole improves the rebound force, and the rear palm adopts the latest ARCH shock-absorbing structure developed by Li-Ning Company with Cushion. The shock-absorbing material greatly improves the shock-absorbing effect. In 2005, apart from "Flying Armor", Zheng Yongxian's design team also launched basketball shoes "Ba Ding" and "Yu Shuai". A refreshing feeling.Among them, "Flying Armor" is the most intuitive, while "Ba Ding" is conceptualized. In 2005, after "Li Ning" signed with NBA star Damon Jones, he brought the three new shoes just produced to Damon Jones. He chose "Flying Armor" as his combat boots.He tried this shoe for the first time in the game against the Philadelphia 76ers on November 12th—"Flying Armor" became the first pair of Chinese sneakers to board the NBA.After two months of high-intensity actual combat testing, Damon Jones' evaluation is: "In addition to comfort, the strong oriental characteristics make him 'different on the court'."

In January 2006, "Flying Armor" was officially launched on the market, and the price was as high as 699 yuan.Not only American NBA stars who are curious about Chinese elements, but also Chinese consumers expressed their approval of this product with their wallets. After the launch of "Flying Armor", sales continued to grow rapidly. In fact, this kind of breakthrough innovation will also be accompanied by insurmountable weaknesses.For example, in order to pursue the overall oriental element effect, the design of the sole borrows the pattern on the bronze ware, and abandons the traditional herringbone pattern. The anti-skid on the asphalt and other outfields is not bad, and the basic test results such as dragging on the floor and emergency stop are basically not as good as other shoes.” Inspired by “armor”, the shoes have an enviable sense of stability, But it also greatly reduces the breathability of the shoes.In order to enhance air permeability, this shoe is designed with a detachable buckle. According to the product introduction, "the buckle can be tightened to strengthen the wrapping of the shoe to the foot, and the buckle can be removed to improve the breathability." However, after wearing The actual situation is not satisfactory. After testing, some sports shoe fans said, "If you take off the strap, the protection will be compromised; if you wear it, the breathability will not be enough."There are also consumers who don't like this shoe, calling this wooden, lacking line feeling "brick".Still, even the nitpickers can't fault the quality and well-crafted quality of this shoe. "Li Ning" has never had a shoe that has attracted so much attention and controversy from the industry and consumers.

In any case, for "Li Ning", which has just begun to try to mainly use oriental elements, this can be regarded as a successful experiment.The rewards for those who dare to try and take serious actions will come soon. In October 2006, "Flying Armor" won the "iF China 2006 Industrial Design Grand Prix", which is known as the Oscar of the industry, in the textile and fashion category.This award, sponsored by the German iF (International Forum Design) Hannover International Forum, accepted nearly 2,000 products from all over the world to participate in the review of 13 categories of awards. It has been affirmed by international professionals.

In fact, not only the design, starting from "Flying Armor", Li Ning has also used a more mature sales method, that is, using an integrated marketing method to more prominently express the personality of the product brand.This time, in line with the oriental element characteristics of "Flying Armor", Li Ning Company boldly adopted oriental element packaging methods and advertising promotion. While introducing "Flying Armor" to the market, the TV commercial "Ink Wash" produced by Leo Burnett for the "Flying Armor" basketball shoes was also launched on major TV stations.In this special advertisement, basketball is shown in the form of ink painting, while the players use Tai Chi to "play" basketball. All the scenes are made of traditional Chinese ink landscape, and the picture is rendered in the style of ink painting.Advertisement's proposition is: "Being someone else is worse than being yourself".After seeing this ad, Zhang Zhiyong happily announced that this ad, in order to achieve differentiated positioning, has "expressed Chinese oriental elements in an international form".This judgment was quickly confirmed by the outside world: in November 2006, this innovative advertisement that blends Chinese and Western cultures won the highest honor "Grand Prize" at the 13th China Advertising Festival sponsored by the China Advertising Association.