July 27th marked the one-year to go date for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Sponsors are already dropping ads and highlighting their roles in the 2012 Games. According to MarketWeek, at least ten 2012 Olympics sponsors launched new ads and offers on July 27, 2011. The countdown to the Games has officially begun, and sponsors are ready to use that countdown as a form of tease marketing for their own brands.
Adidas is the official sportswear partner of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. A new promo spot debuted from Adidas to mark the 365-day countdown to the Games. The spot features Snoop Dogg, Warren G, and British Olympic athlete and world champion triple jumper Phillips Idowu in a 3-on-3 basketball game against three players from Great Britain Basketball. I’m not sure how Snoop Dogg ties into the Olympics and athleticism, but the spot is shown below. You can draw your own connections.
The London Olympic Games are still a year away, but the list of advertisers and sponsors, which is broken down into a variety of tiers according to BBC News, includes brands like:
- Adidas
- BMW
- BP
- British Airways
- BT
- EDF Energy
- Lloyds TSB
- Acer
- Atos Origin
- Coca-Cola
- Dow
- GE
- McDonald’s
- Omega
- Panasonic
- P&G
- Samsung
- Visa
- Holiday Inn
- Transport for London (TfL)
More advertisers and sponsors are sure to sign on before the 2012 Olympic Games arrive as will the number of Olympics-related ads that are sure to be produced. The question is will consumers hit Olympics saturation level before the 2012 Games arrive? Even brands that are not official sponsors of the 2012 Olympic Games are starting to launch tie-in promotions. In London, MarketWeek reports that the top newspapers are already running special Olympics features and Aviva, a British athletics sponsor (but not an Olympics sponsor) is running parallel advertising.
What do you think? With Olympics Games happening every two years rather than every four years as they did when most of us were children, the excitement seems to have waned in recent years. With people around the world having access to so many television channels, so much content, and so many sports at anytime, the “one year to go” message might not be as motivating as it was twenty years ago.
Leave a comment and share your thoughts. Is it too early to start flooding media with Olympics sponsorship messages or is it impossible to reach saturation level when it comes to Olympics fever?
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
