Analysis of the 2022 Winter Olympics event operations!

During the Spring Festival (February 4), the Beijing Winter Olympics officially kicked off. The grand and technological opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics slowly approached amid great anticipation, making every audience member excited. As one of the business cards of a country's brand image, the Winter Olympics carries too much connotation and value. At the same time, as the event form with the largest number of users worldwide, the successful and smooth online hosting of the Olympic Games is of great significance. On the other hand, and more importantly, it is crucial to be able to present and display the country’s strength, cultural connotation, scientific and technological innovation, humanistic care, etc. in a very short period of time, achieve very good results, and have an explosive reputation!

As we all know, " activity operation " is a very valuable, frequently used, and ideal operation method in the Internet operation module. Typical examples include the online Double 11/618 and the offline Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games are the most important and representative events in the world. On the one hand, they cover the widest range of users in the world (I believe that all Internet giants including BAT are very envious of this user acquisition ability). On the other hand, they are also an excellent window for a country to display its overall image. Therefore, every Olympic Games often brings together the best of the country to comprehensively present this kind of beautiful interactive performance, with not only a visual feast, but also a smooth project organization process for large-scale events, an immersive atmosphere design, and user acquisition and communication cases... etc. Therefore, there are many things worth learning and drawing lessons from every Olympic Games.

Well, this article will break down the "Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony" event one by one to explain in detail the highlights and what awesome event strategies are worth learning and referring to!

The core of an event often includes the following 7 points: ① Activity cycle planning; ② User-side incentives! ③How to play the activity! ④Atmosphere/immersion design! ⑤Innovation ability! ⑥Inheritance of the “brand theme” of the event! ⑦ Actual scene presentation! (Offline promotion of venue design and exhibition layout, online demo and visual design)

01 Winter Olympics丨Event Cycle Planning

Good activity planning often has a clear rhythm, compact steps, tacit coordination, a clear time frame, and no procrastination. Especially for large-scale events such as the Winter Olympics and Double 11/618, they are not all the same. Different nodes will be planned to ensure that there is freshness every day during the event. There will often be different content, so as to generate more topics and stimulate the enthusiasm of different audiences to participate.

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will be held at home, and the entire event will start with the opening ceremony on February 4 and last for 16 days. But in fact, the Winter Olympics had a long bid and several years of preparation before February 4. Therefore, the overall cycle planning of the entire Olympic event includes five important nodes: the early Olympic bid process → project preparation period and continuous warm-up → event opening ceremony → the cycle of each competition event → event closing ceremony;

A similar example is the Double 11 promotion, which often includes different rhythms such as the warm-up period, the day of the event launch, the category period, the climax period, and the return period.

Therefore, any planning of medium to large-scale events includes the entire life cycle planning, including the application/project establishment stage → preliminary preparation stage → opening ceremony/official launch → normalized operation stage → climax stage → closing ceremony/encore end stage, etc.!

02 Winter Olympics丨User Incentive Strategy

Regardless of the type of event, whether it is held online or offline, user acquisition capabilities, or the number of users participating in the event (DAU or PV/UV), is the most direct factor in determining an event.

One of the most important reasons why the Winter Olympics is highly valued worldwide is that it can cover the widest range of users around the world. Then the question is, why is the user acquisition capability of Olympic events so strong? And does every Olympic Games have this capability?

Fundamentally speaking, it all comes down to "user demand". The general public yearns for a better life and has many beautiful demands for spiritual pleasure and entertainment life beyond the daily necessities. And it just so happens that the Olympic Games itself comes with five celebrity rings, which can attract users' attention and participation in the event;

03 Winter Olympics丨Activity gameplay: sense of ceremony

The quality of an event is closely related to the gameplay introduced in it. Especially for events with a longer span, several different gameplays must be introduced to avoid user visual fatigue. This is very similar to driving. If you drive in one posture for a long time, you will easily get tired and your body functions will easily become less active.

In this Beijing Winter Olympics, during the various early preparations and the opening ceremony, the gameplay was wonderful and magnificent. From the early design of the Winter Olympics emblem and Bing Dwen Dwen's design, to the 24 solar terms countdown at the opening ceremony, the green sea of ​​warm-up, the president's speech, the national flag raising and the national anthem, and the athletes' entrance ceremony...

The opening ceremony had various ceremonial elements:

04 Winter Olympics丨Atmosphere design, with a "New Year flavor"

When searching for Winter Olympics on Baidu, this design atmosphere will be presented, and the overall search results will be presented in the big background and theme of the Beijing Winter Olympics, so that users will naturally form a sense of self-immersion when they see this;

When the audience saw the sense of ceremony at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, it was easy for them to be involved in it and feel the strong sense of ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

During the Spring Festival every year, every household will decorate with lights and colors. Whether it is couplets, pasted blessing characters, window decorations, lanterns hanging at home, street lamps and light boxes...etc., they are all in red; why? Create a sense of atmosphere! All major platforms will design their APP homepages with an atmospheric feel around the Spring Festival to highlight the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival, which is what people often say: it has the "flavor of the New Year"!

When you are skating or skiing, all you see is a vast expanse of white ice and snow, and you will feel immersed in it. As described in the famous poem "Qinyuanchun·Snow":

The scenery of the north, thousands of miles of ice and snow

Looking inside and outside the Great Wall, there is only wilderness; up and down the river, there is no roaring sound. The mountains dance like silver snakes, and the plains run like wax elephants. If you want to compete with the sky, you need a sunny day to see the red dress and white snow, which is particularly enchanting.

05 Winter Olympics丨Innovative Performance

"The opening ceremony of this year's Winter Olympics is not the largest in scale, nor does it have the most performances, but it incorporates a lot of creative ideas, and its biggest feature lies in its innovative concept." On February 5, Zhang Yimou, chief director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics, said this at the routine press conference of the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee.

Looking back on the entire opening ceremony, Zhang Yimou said that he was very proud of the design of the ignition and torch stand. "Chinese aesthetics emphasizes subtlety, ethereality and blank space. Snowflakes from all over the world gather into a big snowflake, which contains a small torch. It not only embodies the concept of low-carbon and environmental protection, but also has the cultural connotation of 'a single spark can start a prairie fire'. At the same time, the care and companionship of all participating countries for a small flame also reflects the original intention of the Olympic spirit to be passed down from generation to generation and to continue forever."

At the same time, the Beijing Winter Olympics' "Countdown: Beginning of Spring" is stunning and full of creativity. Most of the time, the countdown is done using the Arabic numerals 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. However, our country has a profound culture, with 12 zodiac signs and 24 solar terms. February 4th happens to be the beginning of spring, so the countdown using the 24 solar terms complements each other and highlights the heritage of Chinese civilization.

This reminds me of when I was in charge of JD.com’s 618 event, I also chose to start the countdown from 6 hours, 1 minute and 8 seconds until the event was officially launched at 0:00;

06 Winter Olympics丨Brand theme, value inheritance

In the opening ceremony of this Olympic Games, many key messages are about the connotation of a community with a shared future for mankind. At a time when the world is going through such a difficult time, we hope to offer warmth and touching moments through our performances. So the theme of this Olympic Games is: Towards the Future Together!

Events like the Olympics are very similar to Double 11/618 in that these large-scale events are iterated in uninterrupted inheritance. At the same time, what is inherited in the uninterrupted iteration is the concept of sustainable development. They are regular events held at certain times. Therefore, this type of activity takes more and more comprehensive considerations into account in terms of brand/culture/image display, etc.;

For example: Looking at the brand and slogan changes of Tmall Double 11 and JD 618 in recent years, we can clearly see how to effectively position the values ​​of a marketing campaign!

① Deep exposure of the brand’s sense of mission. The Tmall logo image was added to Tmall’s Double 11 in 2016, and the Tmall brand was added again during this year’s Tmall Double 11. JD.com’s 618 brand was also more clearly defined since 2017. Through the change of brand and slogan, we deepen and emphasize the brand attributes of Tmall/JD.com and the sense of belonging of marketing activities, and emphasize the characteristics of home field battle.

② The continuity and transmission of the brand, from Tmall's shopping carnival to the global carnival, from JD's 618 party to 618 quality shopping festival to mid-year shopping festival, the brand positioning of marketing activities is constantly evolving, but the values ​​have been continuing;

③ The positioning and succession of the business, from Tmall’s shopping → global shopping, from JD’s shopping savings → quality shopping → national mid-year shopping, the business of marketing activities has been expanding and is widely publicized through the brand slogan of the event!

07 Winter Olympics丨Actual scene presentation, technology empowerment, the Winter Olympics venue is amazing

As a representative of offline activities, the Winter Olympics requires good venue construction and physical scene presentation. The venue is the hub connecting the event venue and users. The physical scene presentation of the venue is just like the operation of online activities. It needs to present the actual online interactive experience through interactive demos, and present the visual structure and effect through design drafts.

Good scene design often incorporates certain concepts, meanings, and connotations. For example, the Ice Ribbon Stadium, Snow Ruyi Stadium, Snow Dragon Stadium, etc. built for the Winter Olympics are all very representative!

In daily work, we often need to consider this kind of scene design, such as the following two examples. One is the demo of JD Books. Through the book scene design, the resources of JD Books are embedded in the overall scene; the second is JD France Day. There are two points in the design that are very in line with French characteristics: ① The ICON area is all in French blue + red; ② The background is designed to be the Eiffel Tower in France; very representative!

Author: Zhao Feitan

Source: Zhao Feitan