● From our sister site, TheSportsExaminer.com ●
A fascinating post on X (ex-Twitter) this week from the highly-respected and long-time Olympic sponsorship expert and marketing consultant Terrence Burns (USA) on perspective shifts from Olympic Movement sponsors, a select group that he has personal experience with.
It’s carefully constructed and worth a slow, deliberate read:
“Over the years, I’ve observed an ‘expectations management gap’ from Olympic sponsors that grows a bit wider with each Games.
“The IOC and Olympic movement, quite rightly, place ‘athletes’ at the center of the Games.
“Olympic sponsors, often using a ‘traditional sports marketing’ approach, put fans in the center of everything they do.
“Neither are wrong, and each needs the other to deliver on their respective objectives.
“I will say, however, that the refrain ‘why can’t you be more like the NFL…?’ means someone hasn’t done their homework.
“And, offering brands as different as Coke and Intel (just examples) the same set of marketing rights and benefits is fraying as a strategy (the folks at the IOC know this) and needs to evolve (they know this too).
“But, there is a baby in that bath water that many are urging the IOC to pour down a Swiss mountainside. So, let’s take a breath before we summarily dismiss the greatest global sponsorship program in history.
“I’ve often felt that many sponsors tried force a round peg into a square hole by approaching the activation of their Olympic sponsorship based their experience with other sports property investments. It’s apples and oranges. Not good, better, or worse … just totally different.
“Conversely, the Olympics, in attempts to ‘remain current’ or in reaction to the ‘expectations gap’ of their commercial partners, have at times tried too hard to capture the ‘new’ at the expense of refocusing on what makes the Olympic brand most powerful, namely, its unduplicatable universal values.
“I have thoughts, but I’m more interested in yours.”
Observed: The IOC’s “TOP” sponsorship project was a direct outgrowth of the sponsorship revolution ushered in by the success of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and the approach developed by Peter Ueberroth and Joel Rubenstein of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.
That model – based on fewer sponsors, with category exclusivity – and improved by the IOC to allow worldwide reach, is now 40 years old. It still works quite well and the IOC has created new platforms for its sponsors, notably the Olympic Channel online effort.
And the IOC is continuing to expand, now starting to move into promoting Olympic qualifying events to amp up the noise a full year – or even two – prior to the next Games, and getting ready to create a new property, the Olympic Esports Games, possibly as soon as 2026.
These are new opportunities for sponsors, but to Burns’ point, too often sponsor efforts are simply to attach themselves and sometimes their products to the Olympic Rings. Unlike any other sporting program, the Olympic Games comes out of a religious ritual created exactly 2,800 years ago, in ancient Olympia in Greece.
All of today’s problems with win-first mentalities, cheating and fraud were present then, too, but the ancient Games survived for 293 editions. Paris will be the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad of modern times, a comparative child. But even this new version has power and a tie to the public imagination which is different from football or American Football or basketball or anything else.
Rarely do we see anything from sponsors until the year of – or the time of – the Games that reminds us of that. And there lies opportunity. People feel different about the Olympic Games, and athletes who represent their country, than they do about their favorite teams, whether they be the Chicago Bears or the L.A. Lakers or even Lionel Messi and Inter Miami.
But you rarely see that emotion, respect and admiration embraced in TOP sponsor promotions, programs or outreach. At least not yet.
Maybe Burns’ next gig is as an Olympic sponsor “coach.”
~ Rich Perelman
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