Who will be the Biggest Winner at the Beijing Olympics? Social Media!

The Beijing Olympics have definitely been the most controversial for media coverage already, and they haven’t even occurred yet.  No matter what your thoughts on China and their human rights issues, etc, there will definitely be a major winner at these 2008 Olympics Games – Social Media. The Digital Age has meant that this Olympic Games will be accessible to the largest viewing and consuming audience of all-time.

 

NBC will offer 3,600 hours of coverage of the Aug. 8-24 Games, triple its offering from the Athens Games, and about a third of this will be streamed over the internet. In February, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it would allow blogging by athletes for the first time at this year’s Games. 3G mobile phone technologies could also have a huge impact on the Olympics, allowing athletes and visitors in the Chinese capital to communicate their experiences to those back home. YouTube, the video-sharing megasite will only get a sliver of the coverage. The content, including highlight reels and daily wrap-ups but not live coverage, will reach 77 territories — South Korea, India and Nigeria among them — that aren’t officially covered by Olympic sponsors. Users in the U.S. and other markets where the IOC has sold digital video-on-demand rights on an exclusive basis will be blocked from viewing the footage.

 

So what does this all mean?  The barriers to access and exposure are being torn down.  The world will be able to decide which events and sports they want to consume, giving lesser known sports a greater share of the spotlight via streaming video on (IOC approved) Web sites and digital television.  It will also mean greater transparency on the events and happenings surrounding the games and their host country.  No matter how tight of reigns the host country’s handlers may be as to what the media can cover, the rise in digital technology has empowered citizen journalist to report on what concerns them.

The increasing number of people watching video online has been a challenge for Olympics organizers.

 

While new media channels, from blogging to online video sharing, could expand viewership of the Games, they also make it more difficult for organizers to control exclusive content, for which sponsors pay billions of dollars. These advertisers are confident that the gains will outweigh any problems that may happen from a PR standpoint, as what happened with the torch parade protests.

 

Marketing research is forecasting that over 90% of the Chinese population will view the Olympics and the sponsors associated with them in a favorable light.  That is huge for companies such as Coca-cola, Nike, and Adidas, which are looking to dominate the market in China. On average, it is forecasted that all of the advertisers in China will spend 19 percent more in 2008 than a year earlier to about $54.3 billion from their previous ad spends. In addition, Olympic sponsors alone will spend 21.8 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) this year, rising 52 percent from 2007, just to attract the Chinese Market.

 

In the U.S., there is hardly a platform NBC isn’t tapping for Olympics coverage. Through a content agreement Thomson’s Premier Retail Networks, NBC Olympics highlights will run on high definition screens in more than 5,000 retail locations, including the check-out line in more than 2,000 grocery stores.

 

So, how will you watch the Olympics this year? The countdown to 08/08/08 is almost complete, try not watching the Olympics on your favorite social media platform, I dare you!

 

Can your marketing hold water?

The bottled/designer/distilled water industry is a 16 billion dollar industry and growing.  It doubled in growth and size since 1993 when it was valued at 8 billion alone for the U.S. market.  According to Fast Company, it is more money than we Americans spent on iPods® or movie tickets in 2007.  It is an amazing testament to the psychology of marketing and consumerism.  We are willing to spend our money on something we can get for free from our own taps, yet we’ll shell out the dough for the convenience of water in a handy carrying container that fits into our cup-holders, purses, and kid’s lunchboxes.  All in spite of the fact that a billion people worldwide have no reliable source of drinking water, and more than 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water (but I digress).

 

There is a water war brewing, and it’s primarily being conducted through marketing and advertising.  The bottlers have been nipping at each other’s tailfins for the past almost decade, having their way with filtration systems (such as Brita).  Now the filtration pack is fighting back, playing the “Green” card as a way to differentiate them.  This has pushed the bottlers to fight back by informing and educating how landfill friendly they truly are.

 

It is a battle for perception trying to be won by brand.  “Branding is extremely important for water,” says Chiranjeev Kohil, professor of marketing at California State University at Fullerton – speaking on brandchannel.com. “In a lot of categories, you can duplicate products and get an edge on quality or attributes, but that edge can be shaved off very quickly by competitors. In the water category, there is no technological superiority. The only thing that differentiates one water from the next is the brand.”

 

It is also one of the many products that are being judged on its entire lifecycle.  Water branding attempts to differentiate itself in multiple ways; from the source of the water, the anecdotal legend around it, the label, the social group that consumes it, to the disposal of its packaging, which begs the question – Are we going to have to concern ourselves with the lifecycle of every product in light of this?

 

This is only the beginning.  As markets tighten, and the “greening” of the products proliferates the markets this battle will be fought for several other product categories.  The writing is on the wall for the auto industry, and if bottled water is under siege, how safe are sodas, beers, cleaning products, health & beauty, and anything else that comes in an uncertain package.  Will your marketing hold water?  What do you think?