Does It Pay To Play At The Olympics?

The Beijing 2008 Games had official Global Partners spending a total of $866m for their day in the sun. What were the results? On average each of the twelve official brands increased their brand awareness with Chinese consumers by 7%. Yes, that’s an average. The brand emperors of China turned out to be Coca-Cola and Adidas. These brands took two different approaches to skinning the same cat.

Coca-Cola received a 19% increase in awareness for its efforts. Mediedge:cia is saying that the key factor in the boosted results for Coca-Cola was “its investment in activation of its sponsorship.” Or, it could be that the soft drink maker spent 1.4m on above-the-line advertising, nearly 20% more than any of the other of the Global Partners. Well, that will do it. If you can afford to saturate China in marketing and advertising messages, surely it’s going to pay off.

Meanwhile, Adidas got the same bang for their buck resulting in a 24% increase in consumer awareness. Part of their success came from the Adidas sportswear winners wore on the medal podium. Adidas got the cheaper and better deal if you ask me.

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