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Olympics under golden arches
Sponsor celebrates Games values and teamwork in S.L.
By Brice Wallace
Deseret News business writer
The big cheese of McDonald's Corp. seemed like he was in the eye of a storm Friday afternoon.
Surrounding Jack M. Greenberg were dozens of McDonald's customers, including a group from North Star Elementary School's second grade; kids playing at the indoor Play Place and others outside enjoying an Olympic-themed winter Play Place; people getting a gander at a custom-built "Big Red Shoe Car;" folks greeting Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar; and on-the-ball restaurant employees.
"This," Greenberg said above the boisterous bunch at the Salt Lake restaurant, "is the best part of the job."
His job is chairman and chief executive officer of McDonald's, a worldwide sponsor and official restaurant of the 2002 Winter Games.
He's a busy man for a busy company, especially during the Games. The fast-food giant is swamped with handling food needs for athletes, coaches, officials, media and spectators for the next few weeks, in addition to the demands of its Utah customers.
Greenberg exudes confidence and pride, as if he wouldn't have it any other way.
"The thing we like most are the values of the Olympics," he said. "It's about teamwork, striving for individual best and wanting to be the best, having pride in what you do.
"That mirrors what we like to have for McDonald's and what we think, ourselves, about McDonald's. We get this sharing of values, and that's been one of the attractions for us as a sponsor."
The Games, he said, are a chance to have a broad brand presence — linking the golden arches with the five Olympic rings in a marriage of mighty symbols — but also an opportunity to do some testing and research.
For example, a Snack Station, a new food service concept, is being tried at several U.S. locations, including the Main Media Center. It features some light hot food and snacks. The company also is trying out some new food items.
In addition, it is providing an Olympic experience for 400 top crew members — picked from a worldwide field of 1.3 million — to serve folks at the Olympic Village and the media at the Main Media Center.
"Part of the fun is about the food from around the world that we're introducing, some different tastes, but most of it is about celebrating
our people. What we use the Olympics for is to have these competitions in all these countries and pick the best to reward them and recognize them. It sends the right message for us. It's all about people," Greenberg said.
The company also is trying to give the rest of the world a taste of the Olympics as they taste McDonald's food. Eighty-five percent of the company's 29,000 restaurants are involved in special promotions or Olympics-themed advertising and packaging.
For example, Russian restaurants will have free children's magazines that include facts about the Games and Olympics-themed activities as part of a special-value promotion.
"We try to give some little piece of the Olympic experience to our customers around the world, whether it's a game in Canada or some new tastes in the United States, or some other experience you can only have at McDonald's," he said.
Greenberg said determining the financial gain from the Olympics ties is difficult — "I don't think you can measure the bottom-line impact so easily" — but he said people who contend that the Olympics nowadays are less about athletes and more about companies making a buck "miss the point."
"If you didn't have sponsors who were willing to write checks for this, you couldn't have most of these smaller countries send teams. They couldn't afford to participate," he said. "It's one thing for the United States and some of the major Western European countries, but we've got dozens of smaller countries that could not field teams or afford to participate in an important way without sponsorship.
"So it's a question of whether you want to do the Olympics in that kind of way, so it's a worldwide kind of thing, or not. That commercialization thing is really a misfocused issue because of that point."
In the meantime, he and others will enjoy all the Olympics hubbub, like the kind he experienced Friday.
"I'm proud of way things are being run and proud of what's going on here," he said. "The people of Salt Lake City have shown hospitality and warmth. It's really been spectacular."
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com
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February 9, 2002
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