Quitters Never Win in Olympic Sponsorship Game
CNBC.com

From London 2012-branded t-shirts by Adidas to Panasonic cameras branded with the Olympic Games logo, Olympic sponsors are worming their way into our psyche, hoping the feel-good Olympic association they acquired at huge cost will pay off.

The value of Olympic sponsorship deals remains a closely-guarded secret.

The 11 so-called worldwide partners, including McDonald’s and Coca Cola, are thought to have paid some $100 million to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for a four-year deal under which they are the only sponsors within their product category.

Olympic sponsors are also given the exclusive right to use the Games’ official logos.

But the cost of Olympic sponsorship will almost certainly outweigh the benefits if it is not partnered with “activation” or marketing activities such as the launch of a new product, experts say.

“Just sponsoring the Olympics is a bit like philanthropy,” Professor Dominique Turpin, president of IMD Business School in Switzerland, told CNBC.com.

“The only way to get a return on investment is not just to invest in sponsoring,” he said. “For every pound in sponsorship you spend two or three pounds on activation.”

That could include promotions in stores, creating Olympic-branded packaging, or putting in place a major advertising campaign, Turpin said.

And activation alone isn’t enough.

A report by global information company Nielsen on winners of the Beijing Olympics concluded that sponsorship is a long-term strategy to build a brand.

“With two-thirds of online consumers unsure or disagreeing that they can clearly remember Olympic sponsors, it might seem that sponsorship money wasn’t well spent,” the report said.

McDonald’s has been a sponsor since 1976 and is one of the most frequently cited brands associated with the Olympic Games. Coca-Cola’s long-standing association with the Games means it is also among the most widely-recognized Olympic brands.

“If you want an impact, you need continuity in time,” Turpin said.

Chevrolet’s Super Bowl Ad Choice Will Be a Viral Video
Mashable

Chevrolet will pick the most-shared video among a pool of about 40 crowdsourced videos to determine which will run in next year’s Super Bowl.

The General Motors brand on Thursday presented about 35 of the films on ChevroletRoute66.msn.com. Chevy will award prizes of up to $10,000 to the contestant who shares the most and answers the question “If you could drive to any destination in your home country, where would you go?” The top sharers appear on a Leaderboard on the site.

Chevy announced the program in June. The brand teamed up with crowdsourcing firm Mofilm, and received 197 entries from all over the world for videos riffing on the theme “everyday heroes.” The list will ultimately be pared down to around 38, says Steve McGuire, GM’s marketing strategy manager. (One of the ads appears above.) The video that gets shared the most wins.

Crowdsourcing is nothing new for Chevrolet. The brand worked with Mofilm for a program last spring in connection with the Tribeca Film Festival that yielded four commercials. Chevy also asked college students in 2007 to dream up ideas for a Super Bowl ad. The brand’s agency at the time, Campbell-Ewald, executed the spot.

By encouraging sharing, Chevy is ensuring that it gets maximum social media exposure for well under six figures. “We’re crowdsourcing distribution,” says McGuire.

Such programs can provide big dividends. Another crowdsourcing program, PepsiCo’s “Crash the Super Bowl” — now in its sixth year — allowed that company and its brands to dominate social media conversations prior to the game in February, according to Alterian, a technology and research firm. That program, however, was based on votes, not shares.

Facebook's Uphill BAttle for Big-Brand Advertisers
Wall Street Journal

Everybody wants to be liked. The question for Facebook Inc. is how much advertisers are willing to pay for the opportunity.

The centerpiece of Ford Motor Co.'s online campaign for the 2012 Focus was a free Facebook page hosted by an orange-colored puppet that in a few weeks won over a new, younger audience for the once-stodgy compact.

Ford spokespuppet "Doug" drew crowds to online conversations and videos that starred him clowning around the new Focus. Doug inspired more than 43,000 Facebook users to click "Like," the icon that broadcasts to friends a thumbs-up approval of a brand or product.

While Ford shelled out an estimated $95 million to advertise the new Focus across a broad range of media, it spent just pennies on the dollar for Facebook ads.

Facebook's estimated market value, now in the neighborhood of $70 billion, is founded on the belief that companies will spend big to advertise on the site. Facebook's revenues, which come largely from ads, were $1.6 billion in the first half of this year, up $800 million from a year earlier.

But most of its ads were for small advertisers, such as local businesses and small-scale websites, according to comScore Inc. Facebook is under pressure to grow its advertising on a grand scale, and to snag the sort of big brand names who now drive billions of dollars to TV, radio and print campaigns.

Inside Sprint’s Fan-Centric Sports Marketing Game Plan
Big Lead Sports

Sprint is in the business of wireless telecommunications, but it uses race cars, basketballs, ski slopes and footballs to help its messages reach consumers.

This week, Sprint unveiled a four-year deal making it the official wireless service provider for the NBA. Earlier this month, the company extended its partnership with Nascar, a ten-year deal that began in 2003, through the 2016 season.

Sprint has a sponsorship role with the U.S. Ski and Snowboarding Assn. and naming rights to Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo. Although Sprint’s alliance with the NFL ended in 2010, the company has a presence in the league via teams including the San Francisco 49ers, Indianapolis Colts and Kansas City Chiefs.

In addition, Sprint, based out of Overland Park, Kansas, has alliances with MLB’s Kansas City Royals and MLS’ Sporting KC, as well as the universities of Maryland, Notre Dame and Brigham Young.

As part of it’s NBA partnership, Sprint is launching, with marketing to support, the “Sprint NBA Mobile” app, which will provide Sprint customers access to all NBA live home and away radio broadcasts, in-game and post-game video highlights, news, scores and stats.

Among other activations, Sprint will be presenting partner of digital promotion for NBA opening day on Dec. 25, presenting partner of the NBA All-Star Balloting program and title partner for the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game and Pre-Game Concert, which will be part of NBA All-Star Game festivities in Orlando in February.

And beginning Dec. 25, Sprint will be the halftime sponsor for NBA games on Turner Broadcasting for the entire season.

'X Factor' Sponsors Score Cross-Platform
Media Daily News

Fox's "X Factor" may not have hit the ratings heights as promised to advertisers, but from a digital and social media perspective, the singing competition show was a home run.

Although post-analysis data is not complete, Don Wilcox, vice president/GM of brand entertainment for Fox Broadcasting, says "X-Factor" soared on many digital levels.

"We really wanted to rethink digital extensions, marketing and sponsorship," he says. "We tried to embrace an open, distributed, multiplatform approach. Digital became a high priority for us—much more than in the past."

As it turned out, "the buzz was undeniable," he says. Almost every week since it debuted, "X Factor" regularly shows up in the top-five TV show results when it came to overall social media buzz.

For major brand sponsors of the show, it was a pretty good deal. Sponsors of the show—including Verizon, Pepsi, and Sony Music—got a multiplatform ride: traditional TV and online. (General Motors was primarily a sponsor for the traditional TV show). "The good news for the sponsors is that we took them along for the ride," he says. "The brands were so tightly coupled with the content. There was a natural ownership."

A plethora of marketing efforts included deep Facebook and Twitter efforts. Some of the biggest individual sponsors included Pepsi Choice Performance—where fans could vote on the song choice, wardrobe, dance style, and set style. "Fans designed that spectacle," says Wilcox. "This is not something I've never seen [for a entertainment competition show]."

For Verizon, it employed "touch voting," where customers with an Android-enabled phone could just tap a musical act's visual/photo to vote for them. It proved to be one of the most popular functions, says Wilcox. Verizon also sponsored live views of backstage proceedings.

For Sony Electronics, it sponsored an effort where a popular YouTube personality and fan of the show, Courtney, had all access to the show, filming her in and around the backstage and offscreen activities of the musical acts.