| Salt Lake City |
 |
 |
| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
 |
| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
|
| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
|
| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
|
| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
|
| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
|
| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
|
| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
|
| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
|
|
|
|
Marketing 'wow': Companies testing variety of products, ideas at the Games
By Cathleen Egan
Dow Jones News Service
NEW YORK — To the world, the Olympics showcase medals, hopes, dreams and physical testing. This year, the Winter Games also bring biodegradable cups.
While events like the Super Bowl offer marketers a one-hit attempt to pitch their products, the Olympics provide companies with a marketing opportunity unlike any other. The 17 days of competition, many of the Olympics sponsors and suppliers say, offer a unique chance to test new products, ideas, concepts and programs.
To corporations, the Olympics represents a mini-test-market.
"The marketplace has become so fragmented that very few platforms can talk to such a mass audience," says Peter Stern, president of Strategic Sports Group, a New York sports-marketing firm. "The Olympics borrows from the attributes marketers want: continuity, patriotism, wholesomeness, loyalty, rooting for your country."
As the winter version of the Olympics kicked off Friday in Salt Lake City, a host of companies planned to preview a range of new products, hoping for instant feedback and the prospect of a marketing hit.
The Olympics team at Coca-Cola Co. had three goals, says vice president of community marketing Quinton Martin: "Innovation, leadership and wow. And we looked for marketing ideas within that."
For starters, Coke is testing for the first time radio frequency identification on 81 vending machines scattered throughout the Olympic Village and competition sites. The technology essentially allows consumers to swipe a customized key chain in front of a machine and order up a soft drink, much like an EZ Pass or a Mobile Speed Pass at a highway toll booth.
For the Olympics, Coke passed out the devices, in the shape of a contoured Coke bottle, to some 6,500 athletes, who will use them to get free beverages. The company, Martin says, will be monitoring the reliability of the machines and the technology.
It won't, however, activate the data transfer piece of the technology that would allow the company to monitor specific consumer data, like whether the French drink more Fanta than the Germans. Coke looks to test the technology on vending machines in other U.S. markets this fall.
Also during the Games, Coke will dispense drinks into cups that are 100 percent biodegradable, a feat never previously achieved at the company.
Eastman Kodak Co. is also in the fray. Since Dec. 4, the picture maker has taken shots of the 11,500 people who have carried the Olympic torch from Atlanta to Salt Lake.
"It's a moment they want to commemorate," says Steve Powell, director of customer relationship management, and Kodak captures it for them.
Through the company's Web site, the torch bearers can pick from a variety of picture packages, from a set of 5x7 prints for $19.95 to the $139.95 gold package, which includes an oak plaque upon which the torch can be mounted.
Even pharmaceutical companies are in the Olympics' new marketing spirit. Pfizer Inc. has set up a health IQ van in the Olympic Village to test for cardiovascular disease, heart disease and diabetes. The point: to encourage people to go see their doctors.
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February 11, 2002
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