Marketing Mettle

November/December 2007 Issue: Page 56

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The marketing rights to Olympic logos, the teams and the athletes are splintered into dozens of groups, making it cumbersome to acquire permission to market around the participants. Determining the appropriate team or player to associate with your brand and how to get the rights for the logos and merchandise can be as difficult as obtaining an all-access pass to the Forbidden City.

"There are more rules in Olympic marketing than with any other sport, team or league," says Mary O'Connor of The Marketing Arm, referring to the complexity of dealing with national and international committees.

The IOC and BOCOG control the international rights to the use of the Olympic Rings and the Beijing "Running Man" logos. A top-tier group of international sponsors including Coca-Cola, GE, Lenovo, McDonald's, Omega, Panasonic, Samsung and Visa, among others, can display the logo on their products, advertisements and websites throughout the world and have limited "pass-through" rights to partners. Secondary marketing agreements include more limited sponsorships as well as supplier agreements.

Each country participating in Beijing has its own national Olympic committee (such as the USOC) that sells multiple levels of sponsorships and controls the merchandise licensing rights for items branded with each country's Olympic logos. These rights are also limited to selling and marketing online only to consumers in their country. For example, Volkswagen is the official vehicle company in China, while GM has the same rights in the U.S., according to Robert Prazmark of the Wasserman Media Group, which represents several USA Teams.

Companies with national sponsorships cannot market to consumers outside of their jurisdiction, he says, so they must appropriately focus their websites by employing such technology as geotargeting. Volkswagen's sponsorship should only be displayed on Web pages aimed at Chinese audiences and not on the company's home page, Prazmak adds.

In the U.S., as in other nations, the National Governing Bodies (NGBs) for individual teams such as USA Sailing, Softball and Gymnastics control the licensing, marketing and fund-raising for their respective sports. In most cases the NGBs (there are 45 for U.S. teams) also represent all of the athletes on those teams, but some athletes (such as skier Bode Miller) opt out of participating with their team's NGB and market themselves directly.

Merchandising rights to sell bags or apparel with Olympic branding requires a separate license from the agreements that provide the rights to use logos in promotional materials. Each national team (such as Team USA Swimming or Gymnastics) has its own merchandise licensing agreement as well. Using the images of a Team USA athlete requires additional licensing agreements, and some athletes (as above) decline to participate with their respective NGB, and must be dealt with directly. Got all that?

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