Since Ciaran spotted that Olympic sponsors weren’t using search effectively around Beijing 2008, we’ve been keeping an eye on the digital space around major events to see if sponsors were beginning to exploit the opportunity. They aren’t.      

The latest example is The Masters. A unique tournament for many sporting reasons, but in marketing terms two features are key: the unbranded aesthetic of the tournament (other than the famous Masters mark and three very discreet sponsor logos on The Masters website, the only branding you’ll see is on the players) and the fact that, being the first Major of the season, it’s of massive interest for golf fans worldwide – huge numbers of whom will, naturally, be looking for information on The Masters online, as Google Trends reveals.

All of which would lead you to expect that brands with golf marketing motives, chiefly the equipment manufacturers and leading sponsors of the game, would be using search to ensure that they were entwined with The Masters online.

But they aren’t.

A search for The Masters right now shows that only three companies appear to be bidding for it online, none of which are the brands you’d expect to be activating around The Masters.

And when it comes to SEO, as the search returns show, it’s the same story: the big golf brands are nowhere to be seen. After looking through 10 pages of returns – none of which featured a golf sponsor – I quit. And a consumer of course wouldn’t dream of looking that far… 

By Tim Crow on April 10th, 2009

Tags: Beijing 2008, Default, Digital marketing, Golf, Olympic sponsorship, Sponsorship