2012 Olympics

My favorite visual from the season's marketing

The big news in marketing last week was of course the 2012 Olympics in London.  You couldn't miss it even if you tried, and believe me I tried!  I've been traveling like a Mad Man (!) both around the States and the Globe, and I've been out of the fray for the most part.  Sleeping from plane to plane and running from meeting to meeting.  Such a glamorous life!


So I had to rely on my students from my NYU class this Saturday (it's the summer session) to get me up to speed on Olympics marketing.  So I guess you can say in a way that I am crowd sourcing this post!

The big buzz I suppose was that the Opening Ceremony was a bit of a dud.  Too bad, because I generally find them to be so inspirational since these amateur (ideally) athletes enter the Opening Ceremony as mostly unknowns and then many of them exit the Closing Ceremony as huge "celebrities" achieving greatness beyond compare.  That's inspirational!

In terms of the advertising, nothing seemed to really stand out amongst my students, which I thought was interesting too.  They did make one very astute comment though, which bears repeating.  When comparing the Olympics advertising to the Super Bowl, they noted that Super Bowl advertising is very product centric while Olympics advertising was very emotional.  I think the problem is that it's all the same emotion ... hence nothing stood out.

The students did reference one ad in particular ... from Nike, a brand that is not even a sponsor, who took a very clever approach to "greatness" with an Olympics theme that stretches the "sponsorship" line.

"Greatness isn't reserved for a chosen few!"  Right on!  So perfectly Nike and so perfectly themed and timed for how many people feel this "season."

One sponsored campaign that did stick out at me in my travels was the out of home campaign from United Airlines, the official airline of the US team.  The line "Before they move us, we move them," is just so cleverly written and had stunning photography to boot.  Made for great visual stimulation as I moved from venue to venue myself.  Make me want to go to the hotel gym when I got in each day.

I love the Olympics season.  I love the spirit and the camaraderie and the marketing.  This year I won't be able to participate as much as in prior years, but it's still fun to be a part of it in route.

What's your experience?  Jim.

Jim Joseph
President, Cohn & Wolfe North America
Author, The Experience Effect series
Professor, NYU