Domino Theory's Marketing Blog

I am as big a fan of the Winter Olympics as anyone and you can bet I'll be watching. As much as I'll be watching as a fan, though, I'll be watching also as a marketer. And as much as I'm sure I'll enjoy the events, the Sochi Olympics are a marketer's nightmare - every bit as bad or worse than the Super Bowl.

I'll get to the questionable marketing value in a bit, but first, let's talk about associating a brand with the ideas and ideals put forth by the Russian government.

The Winter Olympic Games should be a great promotional opportunity for corporate sponsors, as outstanding athletes compete in exciting,  good-natured competition and companies get to attach their logos to all the warm fuzzy goodwill being generated. Unfortunately, the Sochi Olympics will be different. While the Olympic ideal separates politics form competition, Russia's lousy human rights record and out-of-date anti-gay stances bring politics to the forefront putting the the ten major corporate sponsors between a rock and hard place.

The mayor of Sochi has claimed that the host city of the Winter Olympics has no gay residents, but that homosexuals would be welcomed to attend the games.

How congenial! Interesting that a reporter for the BBC's Panorama program claims to have visited gay bars in Sochi! Maybe these have only been opened for the gay tourists who have been welcomed so long as they don't "impose their habits on others."

Big corporate sponsors like Coca Cola don't just sit on the sideline and milk the promotional opportunities. They have a seat at the table, they influence how things get run. The positive record Coca Cola has on issues like gay rights in the US can get blown out of the water in a hurry at the Sochi Olympics.

While you can count on the corporate media to downplay the gay rights issues on the air, Coca Cola and McDonald's have both already been hit by protests against their support of the Sochi Olympics.

Near Chicago, a group of protesters stood in front of McDonald’s headquarters with a banner that read, “McDonald’s: Stop funding homophobia.”

Trucks with billboards that said, “Speak out against Russia’s anti-gay laws” circled Coca-Cola’s headquarters in October.

Corporations pay an estimated $100 million to become a major Olympic sponsor. You read that correctly - $100,000,000! On top of this, they pump massive investment into related marketing campaigns.

So quick, name me three sponsors of the last summer Olympics and the products they promoted. Did you drink more Coke or eat another Big Mac because of an ad you watched? I can tell you I purchased all kids of stuff since the last Summer Olympics and not any of it because the company was associated with the games!

Of course I understand that marketing at the global level means more than immediate purchase. There are case studies showing how Coca Cola's sponsorship of the 1964 games in Tokyo, Japan helped them to expand bottling and distribution in that country. But at this point, is there anywhere Coca Cola doesn't have bottling and distribution? I can't imagine where that might be, but maybe you know?

For their $100 million McDonald's got their #CheersToSochi hashtag campaign hijacked by gay rights activists. LGBT protesters have been dumping cans of Coke in the street from the US to South Africa. Maybe this is why Coca Cola's normally ubiquitous Olympics advertising has been all but invisible this year? Have you seen a McDonald's ad yet?

Companies sponsor events like the Sochi Olympics for the, "Halo Effect." The feel good vibe brought on by the camaraderie, sportsmanship and athletic achievement. But what happens when that turns upside down? What happens when there are photos of toilets that can't handle toilet paper, unfinished hotel rooms, undrinkable water, unfinished streets, and the killing of stray dogs? For the first time, Olympic sponsorship has incredible marketing risk.

With dubious ROI to begin with, and increasing safety risk for athletes and attendees, the Sochi Olympics are a marketer's nightmare. For sponsors, this could be even worse than the Super Bowl! Enjoy the games! Then on to Brazil for World Cup this summer and 2016 Olympics where things are, well, pretty damn bad, too.

Are there marketing lessons you can learn from Super Bowl XLVIII? You bet! And I don't mean from reviewing the commercials, either!

What did you notice as the biggest difference between the winning Seattle Seahawks and the demolished Denver Broncos in in Super Bowl XLVIII? Did the Seahawks step it up a notch? Were the Broncos ill-prepared? Did the Broncos choke?

What in the world does this have to do with marketing? Hang with me, I'm getting there.

Both teams are filled with elite athletes that train at the highest levels. Both teams had outstanding seasons and playoff victories over tough opponents, and no one would have guessed in advance that Super Bowl XLVIII would be as one-sided as it turned out to be.

So what made the difference and what does this have to do with marketing??

The difference in the game last night, and the lesson you can apply to your marketing is simple: The Seattle Seahawks did nothing different in preparation for Super Bowl XLVIII than they had done all year. The Denver Broncos, on the other hand, decided that in order to win they were going to have to step it up a notch - and believe it or not, that almost never works!

What's that you say? The biggest game of the year and you don't have to step it up a notch? Exactly!

On the football field, plays are made in fractions of a second. The difference between a completed pass and a hit on Peyton Manning that forces an interception is half a step. So you tell me, who is going to be faster, the player who is doing the exact same thing he's been working on since training camp last August or the player who thinks he needs to step it up a notch and try to remember what it is he's going to do different to win the game? The player who stays with what has worked and plays without thinking is always going to have that split-second advantage.

Are the Seahawks a faster or stronger team than the Broncos? At the highest level of professional sports, the differences in speed and strength between top competitors is going to be negligible. What made the Seahawks LOOK so much faster and stronger is that they relied on habits developed from five months of training. They trusted that what they'd worked on all season long was going to work, they didn't feel a need to adjust their game.

The Broncos, on the other hand, looked out of sync all night. They looked slow and and unsure. They looked like they weren't sure what was going to work. They stopped doing what had worked all season long and tried to do a little bit more. But a little bit more means changing things, changing things means re-learning, rel-learning means trying to remember, and thinking means the Broncos weren't reacting. This made them look like a slower and weaker team from the opening kickoff on.

OK, but this is a marketing blog, not a sports training one. How can you as a marketer learn from the Broncos mistake in how they approached the game? Very simply.

Marketing has changed. It's no longer about warm and fuzzy, no longer about making the CEO feel good about seeing his company name in lights. Marketing is about results and that means sales.

How many times have you sat in a marketing meeting when an executive said, "We need to do something different. We need to really stand out." Why? What does that even mean?

What marketers need to do to deliver better results to the bottom line is be better - not different. A cute ad might attract attention, but what does that matter if the message is reaching the wrong audience, customers can't figure out how to buy the product, or the product doesn't live up to the promise?

It's the marketer's job to create repeatable, measurable activitities that drive the desired results. In order to do this, they need to test, measure, and tweak. They need to learn, embrace, and love data.

Take your web site, for instance. You pay a design firm to build you a web site. You fill it will all the great stuff about your company, you show pictures of your products and happy customers, the CEO signs off, you launch, and then... nothing.

Of course! Where in the process of your web site design did you map out the desired results and how you were going to achieve them? Most companies never do! Instead they "Step it up a notch," they do something, "better."

Before you can do something better, you need to define "better." If better is being more clever and cute than the competition, then you're goal likely isn't more sales. But if better means incrementally improving upon what you know has led to success, you're on the right track!

The Seattle Seahawks knew that being better meant incremental improvement, improvement so slight, it might have been barely noticeable. The Broncos stepped it up, and as we saw, that almost never works!