The Olympics is not for the faint of heart. Never mind the athletes. Being a spectator or a sponsor requires as much grit and fortitude. I know. I just got back from watching my cousin, Caleb Paine, compete on the U.S. Sailing Team. For years, I observed the Olympics from the comfort of my living room, watching the celebration of human spirit and athleticism play out against what I assumed was a perfectly orchestrated spectacle, replete with major brands and a lot of media coverage. It’s not like that at all.
The media are carefully housed in skyboxes, the athletes in their village. The rest schlep around the streets of Rio. I fantasized about sitting comfortably in a shiny, new stadium, eating local food and sipping a sugary Caipirinha. Little did I realize that it would take a two-hour car ride, a mile walk and an hour wait in line. And forget the cocktail, unless McDonald’s, Coca-Cola or Skol, the local AB InBev subsidiary, made it. If not, it doesn’t get into the stadium. This would be a repeated theme at the games, with some brands tarnishing their rep, while others raised their rep, as you will see below.
For a family member of an athlete, the Olympics are a marathon of endless waiting interspersed with moments of emotional torture and, in our case, ultimate bliss. It was worth it, but I wouldn’t do it again. I’m imagining that a few of the sponsors and advertisers are thinking the same thing. Why? The sponsors have it even worse. They paid millions to be there. But it takes a lot more than money to succeed at the Olympics. Sponsors must also have steel nerves, a saint’s patience and organizational skills equal to those needed for the Normandy invasion.
Just imagine yourself in the marketing war room of Speedo or Ralph Lauren as the Ryan Lochte scandal unfolded. Now multiply that by more than 10,000 athletes, mostly adolescents, any of whom can make an equally bad choice at any moment during a 21-day period. Now imagine that your company has bet millions on one or more of those athletes. And you have dozens if not hundreds of your key customers in town to watch it play out. This is the stuff of which PR nightmares are made.
Conversely, imagine the feeling that the folks at Sunbrella, the outdoor fabric company, must have had. They decided to focus the brand’s marketing dollars on the U.S. Sailing Team, and specifically on my cousin, and become a Gold sponsor. After days of nail-biting suspense, and a boatload (sorry) of disappointing results, they saw U.S. Sailing win its first Olympic medal in eight years. So this Image Patrol will diverge from the normal format and judge the impact on the image of brands with a major presence in Rio.
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