Some Brands Question if It's Worth Advertising in Olympics

Last week, the 2020 Olympic Games kicked off in Tokyo with all the pomp associated with planet Earth’s premier athletic event. For anyone who’s watched the Games before, it was all familiar: the fresh-faced athletes, the spirit of competition and, of course, the brands. A who’s who of blue-chip behemoths including Coca-Cola, P&G and Visa have anted up more than $3 billion for the privilege of being an Olympic sponsor, a distinction whose privileges include the use of the Olympic rings—and, indeed, just the word “Olympics”—in their marketing. Yet for all its familiar trappings, Tokyo is an Olympics like no other. First, there is the pandemic. Despite 83% of Japanese citizens calling for the event’s cancellation, the Games have gone ahead—without spectators. Worse still, athletes who’ve trained for years have suddenly found themselves sidelined by a nasal swab and positive test result. Then there are the scandals. To say the Olympics has an image problem is akin to saying the Titanic encountered operational difficulties at sea. Leaving aside the well-known blunders of yore (think: Tonya and Nancy), the Olympics of recent years have, when it comes to ignominy, truly won gold. There’s Team Russia’s doping, U.S. gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s conviction for sexual abuse and reports that Rio officials had built part of the 2016 facilities atop an African slave burial ground. Before they began, the Tokyo Games shook with allegations of vote buying. And opening ceremony composer Keigo Oyamada withdrew over the news that he once bullied a disabled classmate into eating feces. Setting aside questions of basic propriety, one might well ask: Why do multinational brands continue to sponsor this thing? “This is a long-term play,” observed global brand marketing adviser Tim Parkin, who notes that because the Olympics is an international competition, sponsors are seen as patriotic underwriters. “The Olympics as an event acts as a shield that separates the brands from all that negative publicity.” “There aren’t many events that have the ability to unify the world in such a way,” added Ishveen Anand, founder and CEO of OpenSponsorship, a site that matches athletes with corporate sponsors. “We are supporting our country and athletes, not the Games or its politics.” The scandalous headlines are a far cry from the idealism of French nobleman Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who resurrected the ancient Greek games in Athens in 1896. But if today’s event has a problem bigger than misbehavior, it’s generational resonance. Despite sports like surfing and skateboarding having been added to the program, the median age for an Olympics viewer is still 53. And until the Games can be more widely streamed, Parkin observed, that problem will likely remain. “The Olympics is a dinosaur,” he said, “both historically—and the people leading it.” Toyota loses its mettle Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda during the Tokyo Olympic Games Torch Relay in April Though the Olympics remain a vigorous revenue source for NBCU-owned Comcast, which made $250 million off the 2016 Games and sold $1.25 billion worth of ads before this year’s Games were delayed, the benefits for other brands are not as ironclad as they once were. Case in point: Toyota. Daunted by Japanese citizens’ deep ambivalence to the Games, the storied brand, which spent $1 billion on an eight-year Olympics deal in 2015, announced last week that it would not run any Olympic-themed ads in Japan, and that president and CEO Akio Toyoda would not appear at any event. According to a Toyota spokesperson to Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, “The Olympics is becoming an event that has not gained the public’s understanding.” Are you ready for some discus? The 1896 Olympics (1) featured 241 white male athletes; Tokyo counts 11,000, nearly half of which are women. While modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin (2) observed that “the important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part,” the Games have produced no shortage of cheating, most memorably by ice skater Tonya Harding’s ex-husband, who had rival Nancy Kerrigan attacked before the 1994 competition (3). The IOC has tried to draw younger viewers by adding sports like skateboarding (4), but Tokyo has bigger problems—notably Covid-19 (5).

Perspective

The Olympics Is Showing Its Age as Major Brands Question Whether It's Worth Advertising In

It's still the world's premier sporting event, but has seen its fair share of controversies

Robert Klara

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Robert Klara