'Nike and Adidas carpet-bombed the games with endorser-athletes and high-profile sponsorship deals, but smaller competitors such as Speedo and Puma achieved greater surges in awareness and buzz by backing a smaller group of athletes who just happened to dominate the games and much of the conversation surrounding them.' [AdAge]
Using our keen understanding of Olympics sponsorship, it costs a single company about, oh, $33 trillion dollars to attach themselves to the big gaming hullaballo. (Okay, on average it's about $72 million per company, with 63 companies signing on.) This is a lot of money, especially when big chip firms like Cadillac can't even afford to sponsor the Emmys anymore. In return for blowing a wad, official sponsors like Adidas, Coca-Cola, and Samsung get to revel in the good vibes of the Olympics, which they hope consumers will see rubbing off on their logos and encourage them to buy more crap. Except official Olympic sponsors have hit two major hurdles:
1) Unofficial sponsors (like Nike, or Pepsi) can still buy airtime during the games, and use 30-second spots that mimic the Olympic feel without explicitly saying anything about Beijing, the games, or the fact that they didn't pony up tons of cash to write "official Olympic sponsor" next to their logo. The allergy drug Claritin, for instance, signed gymnastics' most-decorated athlete Shannon Miller to shill its pills to NBC viewers, even though it's not an official Olympic sponsor.
2) The Chinese. CONTINUED »
And so it is, the return of the viral video onslaught. This spot, so obviously from Adidas (promoting its Ajax shirt), is shot in the public square in Amsterdam's Leidseplein district. We're only about six days in, so don't judge the video's mere 60,000 views as a measure of success, or failure, just yet. But it's a clever video, and we enjoyed watching it, and it's the type of thing worth emailing to your friends or posting to Fark. And most importantly, it doesn't leave you looking stupid as you try to guess whether some fanboy orchestrated the whole thing, or a guerilla marketing agency.
