Tim Horton’s won the gold medal for Olympic advertisers
Its ad featuring the immigrant family reuniting was rated the gold medal ad during the Olympics by Marketing Magazine readers.
Tim Hortons is second only to the Bay in terms of awareness of who are sponsors (Angus Reid Poll reported in Globe and Mail print edition Saturday Feb 27). And yet they are not even a sponsor.
Olympic sponsorship doesn’t come cheap. Sponsors paid a total of nearly $1bn to VANOC for the rights to be a sponsor Bell alone spent $200 million and RBC $110 million.
Are they getting value? Most aren’t.
I’ve sat through several post Olympics research evaluations. I was struck by two things.
Firstly only a few sponsors even get noticed. There are so many sponsors; 8 international partners, 6 national partners, 9 official supporters, 22 official suppliers, and 2 media partners. Only 3 or 4 get widely noticed. And this year it seems The Bay, Tim Horton’s and Bell are topping the list (see Angus Reid Poll mentioned).
You have to spend a lot on top of your sponsorship on advertising and the like to ensure your brand gets credit and even then it’s not assured.
Secondly companies hope to get some of the great values of the Olympics to transfer to their brand. The Olympics are the world’s biggest sporting event; the best athletes in the world go; it is both the coming together of nations and the celebration of patriotism; it is about passion, commitment and human achievement. It is the fastest, highest and fastest. These more than outweigh the blemishes on the games’ reputation so who wouldn’t want that for their brand?
However few of these values transfer to the sponsors. In fact the only thing that automatically transfers is stature. The Olympics is the world’s biggest and only big successful companies like Coke and McDonalds are associated with the Olympics, so as a sponsor you must be successful. Thus Samsung gains more stature than LG, RBC than TD. Roots got immediate credibility from their link to the Games back in Nagano back in 1998.
The rest is up to how you market the association.
Some companies try to inject some the humanity of the Olympics into their brand image. They use individual atheletes they’ve supported, their employees or cuddly characters. Examples include Rona and RBC this year, Home Depot and Petro Canada in 2008 and Bell with its beavers in 2006.
A less used approach is to draw parallels between the skill and precision that goes into manufacturing your brand and what the athletes do. The Mint took that approach this year, and Chrysler took a similar theme back in Nagano, 1998.
However, the most popular approach seems to be to attach your brand to Canadianness. So you build brand affinity with your target through shared pride in our country. Brands that are doing this for these Games include Samsung, McDonalds, Coke, Loblaws, Tim Horton's and Molson.
Some of these backfire dramatically as far as I am concerned. Coke says “This (hockey) is our game”. Well it may that as Canadians we think of hockey that way, but you Coke are not Canadian and it is not your game. I feel the same about Samsung and McDonalds claiming Canadian citizenship. They are world brands. Claiming to be Canadian is carpetbagging.
Loblaws is a Canadian company and so has the right to use the flag. But their claiming of even a small part of the credit for the athletes’ performance chaffs, especially when linked to their Blue Menu. I guess I’m not supposed to take it literally but I can’t see athletes eating Blue Menu products. It doesn’t help that the skiers, who they featured have not done well this year. Perhaps they should have stuck to unprocessed food.
On the other hand Molson says they are “Made from Canada”. This works for me. One advantage of this is it builds on a long term brand strategy and it is a Canadian brand. Even the name helps.
The Bay also works. The Olympic sponsorship seems to have allowed them to rediscover their Canadian roots after years of ignoring them. This makes me feel good about them as a brand. And the gear they’ve designed is way cooler than I’d have expected from the Bay.
But this is the area where Tim Horton’s really wins.
Their ad doesn’t mention the Olympics but taps into the patriotic feelings that the Games generate. What’s more important is that a key part of their brand is about Canadianness and has been for many years. It feels natural for them and so people associate them with the national pride of the Olympics.
It is a great, memorable ad which taps into a brand truth and that is why they get the gold medal for me.
The lesson for other sponsors? Ask yourself will people notice your efforts and transfer positive values to your brand. And ask yourself, do I need to be a sponsor to get those benefits?
Like the games themselves it is a competition. You are up against the best in the world many of whom will have deeper pockets. If your efforts are less than outstanding you will be lost amongst the non-medal finishers and see little return. If you can’t match up to the Tim Horton’s of this world, save your money and don’t bother with the Games.
3 comments:
This is the best critique of Olympic sponsorship I have read.
What do you think now that there is backlash against Tim Horton's since the story isn't actually true? Will the commercial be remembered in the same way?
Sadly even our heroes have feet of clay. But I still think it's a great ad. It wouldn't have mattered if it were true except that they said it was based on a true story. The power of a strong brand like Tim's Horton's is that most people wil give them the benefit of the doubt. But trust is a fragile commodity.
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