Being A Sponsor Of The Olympic Games Marketing Essay

Being A Sponsor Of The prodigious seconds Marketing assayGlobal marketplace is defined by the Oxford University Press as market on a world-wide scale reconciling or taking commercial advantage of inter peopleal operational differences, similarities and opportunities in order to happen upon ball-shaped objectives. With globalization and advanced technology, global merchandise becomes much important, and many a(prenominal) activities atomic number 18 used as new global selling bastard such as worldwide sports events. The modern exceeding risque is held every four years since 1896 except in 1916, 1940 and 1944 because of the world wars. For now, the exceptional Games ar considered to be the worlds just near popular sports competition, with more than 200 nations participating, and so many companies use it as a global trade instrument. But does this prick work well? This raise bequeath discuss the benefits and the drawbacks of exploitation the Olympic Games a s a global market communication tool and gauge its effectiveness.Becoming a browse of the Olympic Games is ane of the most parking lot ways to use the Olympic as a global merchandise tool. Being a frequenter is a big business, it always be a company zillions of dollars to acquire the merchandise rights to use the events including its image and logo. The presenter fee does non include the advertisement expense, meaning that companies need to overleap more m whizy to promote their reproach or products. Indeed, visa exclusively was estimated to have worn out(p) $886 million on its official sponsorship of the 2008 Olympic Game (CNBC, 2008). With such a large amount of money, being a sponsor of the Olympic Games seems really risky. There are four main disadvantages that a company may face when they use the Olympic Games to promote their brands. commencement exercisely, use the Olympic Game- a worldwide sports event squeeze out let more lot know the brands or companies and find some potential customers, it as well ignores the inconsistency in consumer needs. A customer in America will be different from a customer in South African. So a good global marketing activity should not full depend on the fame of the Olympic Game and use the same style of propaganda all over the world. It also needs different marketing scheme for different countries to address different consumer needs.Furthermore, the inconsistency in consumer needs is not the only factors different from one area to another and sight in one country may also react differently as compared to a consumer in another country. To a company, customers are one of the most important elements, so the reactions from consumers influence a companies next move. The Olympic Games normally works about two weeks, and during this time, companies marketing activities are received by people all over the world. It is difficult to collect different reactions from different people and improve the next marke ting method in time. In the end, marketing activities may be not attractive for some potential consumers which could twist to fall of the whole global marketing plan.Moreover, consumers loyalty is also one of the factors influencing global marketing achievement. When people learn used to buying goods of one brand, it will be very difficult to change their choice. Using the Olympic Game let people know a brand is effective, save Japanese might like a product to have a traditional touch, whereas an American might like to add a retrospective modern look to it. In this case, the Olympic Game global marketing strategy is difficult to devise.In the end, the laws of the land have to be considered. Usually, master key company policies may be devised according to the laws of home countries. But when it comes to the global scale, the overseas laws perhaps are conflicting in these policies. The sponsors spend hemorrhoid of money to purchasers the right to use the Olympic Game logo and ima ge, yet if their advertisement could not published in some countries just because laws conflict, indeed all the effort will be in vain. So it is requisite for a company to know laws and rules abroad ahead they make the global marketing strategy.On the other hand, global marketing also brings benefits to companies. First and foremost, using the Olympic Games as global marketing tool can increase brand awareness. As the Olympic Game is a worldwide sports event involved more than 200 nations, almost every nation will purchase broadcast rights. So announce at this consequence can reach potential customers all over the world effectively, curiously with the Olympic image and logo. Moreover, in an extreme case, the sponsor may push back a chance for free advertising. In the 2008 capital of Red China Olympic Game, the last torchbearer- the athlete who lights the stadium flame was Li Ning who is a former gymnast who win six medals. In the last few minutes of the ceremony, Li Ning e ffort into the stadium and lighted the flame as one million millions of people watched. For that 2 or 3 minutes millions of people who did not know this Li Ning brand before learned it (Pitt, 2010, p.282).Secondly, using the Olympic Game as a marketing tool to promote products and brands could also increase brand acquaintance. An pillow slip of this is the study carried out by John and Martin (2009, pp.126-127) in which compared brand recognition level between Nike (sponsor) and Adidas (non-sponsor) by collecting respondents of Australian adults from nine months before the 2000 Olympics to three months after it. The results show that at the beginning of the survey, 77% of Australian individuals recognized Nike, while only 47% of them knew Adidas. During the Games, the recognition level of Adidas suffered a drop from 67% to 56%, unless Nikes recognition level as official Olympic sponsor was still over 70%.Thirdly, using the Olympic Game as a marketing tool becomes a unique experi ence. Global marketing is a multi-million dollar business but it is never only about money. Being a successful sponsor of the Olympic Game and gaining expected benefits is not easy. It includes setting appropriate marketing goal, making accurate marketing niche and using various marketing strategies. All the factors can be practiced during the marketing process. When the Olympic Games are over, sponsors can get feedback and try to improve their marketing policy to get more achievement in the next global marketing activity. For example, the Coca-Cola conjugated the Olympic Torch communicate. Since 1996 Coca-Cola has been a member of the Olympic Torch Relay and started to use it as on of the significant sponsor able constituents. In the next 5 Olympic Games, summer and winter, Coca-Cola learned from the successful earlier Olympic Torch Relay programmes and improved its marketing strategies. As a result, Coca-Cola launched its new marketing strategy. The company did not just use the offline broadcast to promote but by using both online and offline platform at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, to allow more customers in China to know the Olympic spirit and to be more loyal towards the Coca-Cola brand (Choi, 2008, pp.248-249).Finally, global marketing could lead to lower marketing costs and increase revenues. Worldwide sponsorship generated $866million for the 2006-2008 Torino/Beijing Olympic cycles. Eleven multinational sponsors paid an average of $72 million each. More remarkably, these numbers represent only the fees for sponsorship rights sponsors still had to pay for the advertising itself (CNBC, 2008). According to this figure, the cost of using the Olympic Games to promote brand or product is really high, but is even higher if the company has to market a product differently in every country that it is selling. In addition with same input, the effect of Olympic marketing tends to be 2-4 quantify more than conventional marketing. GE illustrates this point clearl y. GE is one of the Olympics Game sponsors. During the Games its company-wide sales revenues exceeded US$1.7 billion, includes NBC Universal, GEs subsidiary media company, more than US$1 billion in advertising revenue was made which generate a set down and make Beijing the most successful Games in GEs history (Hanssen, 2009, pp.126-127 ).This essay has discussed the benefits and drawbacks that using the Olympic Games as a global marketing tool can bring to a company. Indeed, there are some disadvantages about the inconsistency in consumer needs and reactions, but all the problems could be puzzle out by tracing outcomes and improving marketing strategy after the marketing activity. However, the advantage of global marketing is widely agreed, otherwise companies would not spent large amounts of money on it. Overall, the benefits of the global marketing outweigh the drawbacks and it would be interesting to find what is the most important factor could influence the effect of global m arketing.World count 1,416