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Olympic sponsors' ads up 49%

By Hu Yuanyuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-29 09:42

A man walks past the billboard of the Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co designed for the Olympic Games in the  file photo taken in Beijing.Measured advertising expenditure by the top Olympic Games sponsors has jumped by 49 percent in the second quarter (April-June) compared with the previous quarter to 9.1 billion yuan ($1.33 billion), said an Olympic research report run by R3 and CSM, two independent marketing consultancy companies.[China Daily]

Measured advertising expenditure by the top Olympic Games sponsors has jumped by 49 percent in the second quarter (April-June) compared with the previous quarter to 9.1 billion yuan ($1.33 billion), said an Olympic research report run by R3 and CSM, two independent marketing consultancy companies.

"Not only are sponsors dominating the mass media, we're seeing them extend this activity to activation events, both around the Torch Relay and standalone activities" said Greg Paull, principal of R3. "While these are harder to independently track, there has never been more on-ground activity in China's main cities than right now."

In addition, the report shows there has been unprecedented investment in TV sponsorship in these three months. There was a 65 percent increase in the sponsored broadcast hours this wave, led by live Torch Relay programs associated to Coca-Cola, Samsung and Lenovo.

And it's not only the sponsors that pushed for more content - local milk company Mengniu sponsored over 50 hours of national TV through this period, four times more than any other company. Their China Music Chart Awards recorded a substantial audience share through this period, adding confusion to the consumer perception.

"Despite the fragmentation of the media, prime time TV viewership is still strong this year in China, and marketers continue to invest to get returns," said Matt Brosenne, International Client Service Director at CSM Media Research in Beijing.

But does the huge amount of investment really work? On the question of return on investment, R3 and CSM have linked sponsorship costs and total media investment to both consumer perception results and published business data for mainland sales.

"We have developed a proprietary method called the OP (Olympic Performance) Index, which weights awareness, purchase intent, value and recall," said Paull.

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