The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2017–2021
ANTA's 'Yao Feng' hands Klay Thompson's China tour to streetball — a 12-city grassroots IP
ANTA and UID turned Klay Thompson's 2017 China tour into a 6,000 km, 12-city streetball relay that grew into a five-year national tournament IP
ANTA (安踏)
What it had to solve
ANTA owned Klay Thompson's endorsement, but Chinese basketball marketing was celebrity-led while millions of young players on concrete courts were ignored; the brand wanted to own youth basketball culture, not just sell shoes.
How it works
In summer 2017, ANTA's basketball division turned Klay Thompson's endorsement tour into 'Yao Feng' (要疯, 'must go mad'), a grassroots basketball road trip: three streetballers — Cao Fang, Zhao Qiang and Yan Shuai — drove 6,000 km through 12 cities in custom vans, and at every stop picked up three new local players to carry on to the next city. Thompson crossed four cities in two weeks, and his China tour antics became a phenomenon — the #ChinaKlay hashtag even trended in the United States.
The insight was that Chinese basketball marketing had only ever rented celebrities, while the country's biggest basketball culture — millions of players on concrete outdoor courts — had no stage and no brand behind it. Agency UID designed the tour and filmed real players in real cities, so every stop produced its own stories and new faces rather than one national show.
The relay became an annual IP: tournaments, the 'Yao Feng' shoe family, themed courts and college tours ('Qingkuang Zhi Lü' [轻狂之旅]) followed. By the fifth edition in 2021 the national final drew 100M+ online views and reached #2 on Douyin's hot search; four Yao Feng players appeared at the launch of China's Tokyo Olympics uniforms, and ANTA pointed to the IP as the engine behind growing basketball-shoe sales toward a 12M-pair target.
Why it lands
- Making amateurs the protagonists gave every host city ownership — the tour visited them instead of asking them to watch.
- The relay mechanic (add three players per stop) generated serial content and fresh faces, keeping the IP alive for five years.
- A named ritual — 'Yao Feng' (要疯) — gave young players an identity to rally around, which is harder to copy than a discount.
- Thompson's viral moments supplied global reach while the format stayed rooted in Chinese courts, so scale and authenticity didn't conflict.
What it did
By the fifth edition in 2021 the national final drew 100M+ online views and hit #2 on Douyin's hot search; 'Yao Feng' became one of China's best-known youth basketball events, four of its players appeared at China's Tokyo Olympics uniform launch, and ANTA tied the IP to its basketball-shoe ambition of growing from 6M to 12M pairs a year.
What you can take
A celebrity asset compounds when it is handed to the community: give amateurs a stage, a ritual name and a route, and the star's tour becomes an annual IP that sells product as culture.
Since then
Yao Feng ran its fifth edition in 2021 with a 100M+-view final, then kept expanding — college tours, theme gyms, Z-UP rookie signings and a shift from star-led to grassroots-KOL-led storytelling. ANTA used the IP as the flagship of its direct-to-consumer strategy, and the basketball business cited it as the reason it could aim to grow shoe sales from 6M to 12M pairs annually.
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