The Olympics, long an international spectacle featuring the highest caliber athletes from around the world competing for gold, also features another, less well-known battleground: the competition between companies hoping to capitalize on the attention on the event. Most companies opt for the more by-the-book method of capitalizing off the attention being paid to the Olympics: becoming an official sponsor of the event. Sponsorship agreements with the International Olympic Committee grant companies the advantage of being able to use exposure at the event itself, as well as the words associated with the event, to uplift their brands. But they are expensive. For example, Adidas paid over $201 million to sponsor the 2012 Olympics.
So some companies try an alternative, less formal method of advertising: ambush marketing, or the strategy of using creative methods of advertising and promotion to associate them with a public event without paying the fees for exclusive sponsorship. Ambush marketing has an illustrious history at the Olympics, with companies using it to their advantage to save on sponsorship dollars while successfully associating their brand or company with a popular event.
Perhaps no company has been quite as successful at ambush marketing as Nike at the Olympics. Nike was bravest with its ambush advertising during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), when it took various steps such as passing out flags to fans in the stands, opening a large “Nike Center” near the athletes’ village and distributing Nike-branded flags to fans to ensure their logo would be used at events. Nike also provided sprinter Michael Johnson with a pair of flash Nike-branded gold spikes that found their way onto the cover of TIME magazine. Reaction against this from the IOC was strong, with Nike making amends with its sponsorship of the Olympics in 2000. But Nike still found a way to circumvent the IOC’s rules against non-sponsor companies referring to the Olympics by name in 2012, when it released an advertisement on television featuring athletes competing in sports in places around the world named “London.”
We are unlikely to see much ambush advertising this Olympics from Nike, who is sponsoring Team USA’s uniforms, and the IOC’s regulations since Nike’s infamous stunts in 1996 have largely tamped down the ambush advertising from other companies. But what about the athletes, who have their own sponsorship agreements with companies?
A 2019 amendment to the IOC’s Rule 40 that regulates advertising during the Olympics allows athletes to thank their sponsors, a big change from past Olympic Games. A sponsor must submit a form to the IOC, and there are two types of permitted marketing: generic marketing of the product, service, and brand that includes one or more athletes and athlete recognition marketing reflecting the sponsor’s support of the athlete’s participation in the Olympics. The types of marketing cannot be combined. Within the recognition marketing category, there are two sub-categories: athletes thanking personal sponsors on personal social media channels and personal sponsors recognizing athletes. The IOC further regulates how many times an athlete can thank his/her sponsors on social media (7) and how many times sponsors can repost those thank you messages (1). With such a detailed process to enable athletes to thank their sponsors and an entire disciplinary system set up to enforce those rules, it is unlikely that we will see a repeat of Nike’s bold type of ambush marketing like we saw in 1996, whether from athletes or companies.
