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Pedestrianswalk by aboardlisting sponsors and partnersofBeijing Olympics. The Gameshave offered a great opportunityof brand promotion for these companies. |
Down a Budweiser or a Coke when thirsty. Queue up at a McDonald's when hungry. So how is Beijing Games any different for the visitors in terms of brands?
Despite the profusion of familiar, foreign brands this time as well, Beijing Games actually has over 30 Chinese sponsors and partners. For foreigners not familiar with these brands, the Games is their first contact with these Chinese products, completing their China experience.
Let's start with the passage to China. Air China is the only airline partner of the Games. The 300 air attendants serving the executive class of Air China planes have been selected from over 4,000 applicants aged 19 to 25 from all over the nation. Instead of the regular uniform, these girls have been given purple or pink silk qipao, a traditional Chinese dress.
After landing in the host city, as one walks into one of the innumerable restaurants in Beijing, the wait staff is most likely to recommend Yanjing beer, not because it is one of the Olympic sponsors, but because it happens to be the thirst buster of choice for most Chinese.
The Olympics is much more than an event for athletes to showcase their talent. For enterprises, it is an opportunity to build their brand, improve services and visibility. If the cases of successful brand building in previous Games are anything to go by, Chinese enterprises should feel particularly encouraged. Japan's electronics companies, especially Panasonic, boomed after the Tokyo Games in 1964, while Samsung in particular and the South Korean electronics companies in general hit the global stage with the Seoul Games in 1988. Today, both Panasonic and Samsung are global sponsors of the Olympic Games.
However, most Chinese companies are too small compared with international giants. Lenovo, the leading PC maker, is the only domestic brand among the 12 global Olympic sponsors, the top-tier sponsorship for the Games. Foreign consumers are far less familiar with most other Chinese brands. Though Tsingtao Beer may have some fans in Munich since the brand was created by the Germans in 1903 in the eponymous coastal city and some US families might have Haier refrigerators as the company set up its factory in South Carolina in 1999, few people outside China know about the country's leading brands. These companies have therefore prepared as hard as the athletes to grab attention during the 17-day event.
Brand repositioning
