A dozen multinationals such as Coca-Cola, Lenovo, McDonald’s, and Samsung have laid out as much as $100 million each to be global sponsors of the Beijing Olympics this summer. An additional 11 — including Volkswagen, Adidas, and Air China — have paid as much as $50 million each for the right to link ads within China to the Games.

Dozens of other companies have less extensive tie-ups, ranging from the ‘official wine supplier’ (Great Wall) to Guangzhou Liby Enterprise Group, which is an official provider of detergent for sheets, shorts, and other laundry.

The problem for sponsors is that plenty of other companies think the Olympics are just as attractive — and are finding unofficial ways to link their brands to the Games.

Nike has endorsement deals with Athens gold medal hurdler Liu Xiang and other Chinese athletes. Part of its campaign is in our illustration.
Sneaker-maker Li Ning (named after its founder, an Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics) runs TV spots featuring gymnasts and basketball players and is sponsoring the U.S. Olympic Ping-Pong team.
PepsiCo got 160 million online votes from mainlanders in a contest ranking mug shots sent in by fans; the winning entries will be printed on cans cheering on Team China. And Pepsi has replaced its traditional blue cans in the mainland with red ones ‘to show our respect to the year of China,’ says Harry Hui, Pepsi’s marketing chief in China.

It works.

Qantas did it to Ansett Airlines in the 2000 Olympics. Ansett died, Qantas went from strength to strength.

Most ambush marketers do what Qantas did and simply deploy images of athletes. Thousands of Chinese polled by research firm Ipsos say they believe Pepsi, Nokia, and Li Ning are linked to the games, though they aren’t. That’s important because roughly three-quarters of Chinese consumers say they would give preference to products they associate with the Olympics, Beijing consultancy R3 reports.

It doesn’t help that the Beijing organizing committee offers five levels of sponsorship, and a total of 49 companies have signed up.
Source: BusinessWeek

With the Beijing Olympic Games 239 days away, BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad) celebrates its sixth birthday.

Liu Jingmin, BOCOG executive vice-president, said, ‘In the beginning, BOCOG had less than 100 staff members, but with the growing workload, we had to move twice, first from Xinqiao Hotel to a more spacious place — Qinglan Plaza in September 2002.’

On July 13, 2002, the first anniversary of Beijing’s bid victory,BOCOG officially published the Beijing Olympic Action Plan, which outlined the promises made in the bid document.

The plan covered such areas as general strategy, the construction of competition venues and related facilities, an ecological environment and city infrastructure, the social environment, and logistics.

In the first three years, BOCOG drew up and implemented a series of plans, unveiled the Olympic emblem of a ‘Chinese Seal, Dancing Beijing,’ dislosed the theme slogan of ‘One World One Dream,’ and revealed the five Fuwa mascots.

From 2003 to 2005, extensive work was done to draw up the competition schedule of the Beijing Olympics. The opening and closing ceremonies, ticket sales, the torch relay and other matters were also put on BOCOG’s agenda.

During this period, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) increased guidance regarding Olympic preparations.

In January of 2006, BOCOG moved again to a new but this time permanent place — the Olympic Tower, designated as the command center of the Olympics in 2008. The body of BOCOG expanded to over 20 departments.

2006 saw attention focused on the core of the Olympics, namely the sport competitions.

BOCOG oversaw the progress of the Olympic venues, the finalization of the sports schedule, ticket sales, recruitment of volunteers, and the staging of Good Luck Beijing sport events to test the venues’ functions and the organizers’ capabilities.
Source: Beijing 2008

BOCOG issued a written proposal aimed at joint anti-ambush marketing work efforts during a symposium on anti-ambush marketing for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Representatives of the Olympic worldwide partners and the partners and sponsors of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games enthusiastically accepted the proposal.

At the symposium, representatives of the BOCOG marketing and legal affairs departments discussed with those present the anti-ambush marketing work efforts over the course of 2007, including the thought processes and strategy. Representatives from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce also offered suggestions regarding the protection of intellectual property rights.

Next year will be the decisive year of battle for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and brand protection remains a significant task. In the proposal, BOCOG explicitly states the following:

The Olympic worldwide partners and Beijing 2008 Olympic partners and sponsors do not engage in any kind of activity that would promote ambush marketing.
The various industry associations actively develop Olympic brand protection as well as activities and promotional efforts surrounding anti-ambush marketing education
Advertising agencies should increase their understanding of Olympic marketing regulations, respect professional ethics, and not engage in ambush marketing activities.

The problem is the main players — those who will be doing the ambush marketing — were not present.

An example of how it works: At the 200 Olympic Games Qantas took all the credit although the official sponsor airline was Ansett which is no longer with us. Look at the illustration above and wonder whether Qantas was a sponsor. It was not.

Already Acer is hammering out press releases about it being an Olympic Sponsor. Not of Beijing but of the London Olympics and other that lie ahead.

If Lenovo is not careful then Acer will appear to be a sponsor of the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing which will not, from the point of view of Lenovo, be a good thing.

Ambush marketing is easy to spot, difficult to define, damn near impossible to stop. There is an excellent article by Jeremy Curthoys and Christopher N. Kendallon how it was used in the Australian Olympics in Ambush Marketing and the Sydney Games. It was from this article our illustration of Cathy Freeman apparently running for Qantas, which was not an Olympics sponsor, is taken.
Source: Beijing 2008

Billions of dollars that will be spent on Olympics-related advertising — directly by sponsors, and indirectly by marketers seeking to bask in the reflected glow — and this could smooth the bumpy ride the American advertising industry is now enduring.

There are fears that the economic problems in the American economy may lead marketers to cut budgets for next year. Swooping in to save the situation come the Olympic campaigns.

Universal McCann media agency has made a prediction that sees a 5.5% increase in worldwide advertising spending next year compared with 2007.

The recent Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report from PricewaterhouseCoopers is forecasting that ad spending in China in six major media will increase to $22.5 billion in 2011, from $13 billion this year.

The Olympic torch relay, scheduled to begin in March, is planned as the longest ever. The sponsors are a Chinese company, Lenovo, along with Coca-Cola and Samsung.

Lenovo has cunningly worked the symbol into a complete range of products inspired by the games. The first of these products is the notebook Xiang, shown here, that has the same graphic patterns found on the Olympic Torch.

The competition among agencies for work for Chinese advertisers is almost a separate Olympic Games.

JWT, part of the WPP Group, has announced it has landed five assignments to create campaigns in China to appear during the Olympics.

Three are sponsors, Lenovo, China Unicom and the Yili Group, which is China’s biggest dairy.

The remaining two assignments are from Chinese companies that are not official Olympic sponsors but will run campaigns in the country during the Games One is Anta Sports Products, which sells athletic footwear and apparel. The other is from Lilang, a maker of men’s wear.
Source: New York Times

China’s two largest websites are having a battle — nothing physical — over Olympic advertising sales rights.

In one corner, Sohu, the Internet content sponsor of the Beijing Games, claims that online ads from other sponsors with the Beijing Olympics logo can only appear on its website. As our illustration shows Charles Zhang for Sohu signed an agreement to that effect in Beijing, in November, 2005.

In the opposite corner Sina says it plans to boost its Olympic content — no law against that — and also its development and marketing to attract all kinds of advertisers. And, of course, most of these will be Olympic advertisers.

Sina and its partners have also contested Sohu’s claim of exclusivity. They say Sohu’s sponsorship only entitles it to create the official website for BOCOG and to use the Beijing Games logo of a running man in its marketing.

Olympic organizers have confirmed Sohu’s marketing rights as an Olympic sponsor, such as its eligibility to use the Olympic logo. It has also promised crackdowns on any company that tries to establish or imply an association with the Games without paying any royalties.

Sina has since toned down its ‘Olympic marketing’ publicity campaign.

Olympic marketing officials have yet to confirm that Sohu.com owns the exclusive rights to carry online ads from other Olympic sponsors.

Sina says it plans to deploy a 450-strong team to cover the Games in Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish and Arabic.

Sohu has dismissed Sina’s strategies. It uses the analogy of ‘a regular army to a small band of guerrillas’ when comparing itself to Sina in terms of Olympic news coverage. That is a pretty dangerous analogy to use. Guerrillas have hammered regular armies many times. Read up on Chinese history to see some star examples.

All of which is reminiscent of the Australian Olympics. Qantas was not an official sponsor. But no Australian can tell you what airline paid for that privelege. All the advertising from Qantas seemed to suggest that it was the official carrier. Without directly saying so to the 3.8 billion viewers who watched the games on television. And the advertisements were pretty much all Qantas.

The official sponsor was Ansett Airlines. Which has now gone out of business. Qantas is the official Olympic carrier for the Beijing Games. Not all of the action at an Olympic Games is of a sporting nature.
Source: China Daily