Fred Burt, Siegel+Gale Managing Director, London Office examines the opportunities for brands during the Olympics – and some advice to make sure your brand gets the most from any association.

With Beijing in full flight and minds beginning to turn to London, it’s a great time to be thinking about brands, and the role they play in the Olympics.
There are three key types of brand we need to think of when looking at brand building within the Olympics.

The first, and most obvious, are the sponsors and advertisers. Much will have been written about this - I’ll leave aside the need for breakthrough creative, for example, which in my mind is a given.

Here are four key observations however which I think are key strategic issues brand owners need to address.

1. Make sure you have a established, genuinely international brand.

The Olympics is not the forum to launch a new brand. Local market ring holder rights, as well as national team sponsorships can be more cost effective if your brand is regional or local. AT&T, for example, sponsors the US Olympic team as their brand (certainly their consumer brand) is a US brand.

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Business Spectator
Edited by Sophie Vorrath

There’s nothing like a major global sporting event – like, say, the Summer Olympics – to reinvigorate the world of mass marketing.

While marketing was "a dirty word in China less than a generation ago", say Kevin Allison, Geoff Dyer and Patti Waldmeir in the Financial Times, "Beijing is using the Olympics to market itself as a superpower", as well as to shift its corporate image from "sweatshop to the world" to that of a high-quality, high-valued-added and high-technology hub.

"Never before has the market potential of the host country on its own been viewed as possibly worth the significant investment," says Julius Roberge, strategy director for Siegel+Gale New York, talking to MarketWatch.

The challenge, he adds, "is Herculean". And while success would send a strong new message, any missteps mean China "will not soon have such visibility to transform a lagging image."

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Brandcurve
by Susan Gunelius on August 18th, 2008

I’m very excited to publish an interview I was lucky enough to get with branding expert Larry Vincent, Siegel+Gale (part of the Omnicom Group Inc.) Group Director of Strategy in Los Angeles. Larry was kind enough to answer my questions related to the Olympics and how companies use the Olympics to further their brands. Following is my interview with Larry.

Brandcurve: What brand (or brands) do you think is doing a particularly good job of leveraging the 2008 Summer Olympics to promote their brand and why?

Larry Vincent: Adidas has done a very good job. Though at first controversial to many because outsiders thought the nationalistic imagery was pandering, it’s a great example of a brand finding a voice in a special market. The brand work (not just the advertising) really celebrates the Games and the aspirations of the host country.

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Too many firms use jargon to convey ideas
By Stacey Burling
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

So you’re at a party getting to know a couple of attractive strangers.

"What do you do?" you ask one of them innocently.

"I’m a market-leading provider of technology-enabled process-optimization tools to reduce and right-size inventory, improve forecast accuracy and service, optimize production resources, and reduce cycle time across the supply chain," your new acquaintance intones.

Whoa, time to get out of here, you think. But you recover your social graces enough to look hopefully at his friend.

"Well," the friend says, "I develop small-molecule, orally administered pharmacological chaperones for the treatment of human genetic diseases."

"How interesting," you lie, edging toward the door. "I’m sorry to run, but I just remembered I have to clean the cat boxes. Nice meeting you."

Obvious as it may be that such heinous assaults on the English language would send people at a party running, this is how real businesses introduce themselves to reporters - and anyone else who reads their news releases on their Web sites - every day.

After enduring this literary torture nearly to the breaking point, we thought it might help to share our pain, plus some thoughts from business experts - dare we say "thought leaders" - about the virtues of clear communication. After all, if potential customers cannot figure out what your company does, that might be a problem.

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5 Tips for Parents Baffled by College Aid

If you’re confused about what makes Pell different from Stafford, Perkins, PLUS and everything in between, you’re not alone.

A new study finds — not surprisingly — that most parents don’t understand the terms of their children’s financial-aid packages for college. More than three-quarters of those surveyed by branding firm Siegel+Gale didn’t know there is a big cost difference between subsidized loans and private loans, which come with higher interest rates.

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Larry Vincent, group director of strategy in the Los Angeles office of the brand strategy and design consultancy Siegel and Gale, said effective Super Bowl advertising does apply when there is a direct call to action. He cautioned against participating when the ad simply says "something about the brand values or trying to communicate with the personality and the voice of the brand. [The point is] you want to get as many people as possible to understand that you have something new that you have put into the marketplace. It can be very effective in that sense — not otherwise."

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S+G’s Howard Belk comments on the US economy and its impact on marketing and brand spend to the UK trade press at UTALKmarketing.com.

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Siegel+Gale’s international practice areas continue to grow aggressively. The UK office recently launched some exceptional identity work for clients in both Europe and the Middle East. One most recent credential is the identity development for the spin-off of the trade finance arm for The Islamic Development Bank. Designed by the UK office of Siegel+Gale, the visual identity is about bringing countries together while referencing elements of islamic heritage, working across multiple countries.
Design Week Magazine in the UK covered the story in their June 19th edition.

Co-President & Chief Strategy Officer, David Srere appeared on CNBC Business news to comment as brand expert on LG’s new LCD Flat Panel Ad Campaign. Revolving around a TV trailer for an upcoming fictional television series entitled "Scarlet", LG seeks to attract mass audiences to its website in an effort to lure new customers to purchase its new line of products.

The controversial question: Marketing stunt or scam? Can "trailer marketing" effectively sell hi-tech products or is this just another expensive media play by a large company where they ring the dinner bell only to leave tens of thousands of hungry customers expecting a fancy feast, waiting for little more than table scraps. CNBC’s LA correspondent, Julia Boorstin, seeks answers and calls on Siegel+Gale for comment. See the news excerpt.