Olympic sponsorship isn't an automatic gold medal
— -- Olympic sponsors face a vexing dilemma: How to keep their multimillion-dollar link from being singed by the Olympic flame?
For all the PR an Olympic tie-in brings, the Beijing Games may be disintegrating into a sponsorship crisis-in-waiting. Sponsors who pushed for China — the planet's largest emerging market — to get the 2008 Games now risk being linked with human-rights abuses.
"We're committed to the Olympic torch relay and the Olympics," said Coke spokesman Kelly Brooks.
But Olympic sponsorship is now a "high-stakes balancing act," says Rance Crain, editor at Advertising Age. "Staying low-profile is the opposite of what an Olympic sponsor typically wants to do."
Some options for sponsors:
•Do nothing. Sponsors with huge investments "can't do anything more than hunker down and ride this out," said John Bevilaqua, president of Creative Marketing Strategies. He directed Coke's 1980s Olympic sponsorship.
•Hedge their bet. The big sponsors should keep their ties but also make multimillion-dollar donations to human-rights groups, said Lynne Doll, president of Rogers Group, a crisis management firm. "You can simultaneously be for the Olympics and for human rights. "
•Take the public pulse. Sponsors should be researching and analyzing attitudes of consumers and employees, said Bob Heussner, head of Olympic marketing for Octagon Marketing.
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