I wasn’t surprised by Wednesday’s announcement of Procter & Gamble’s TOP sponsorship agreement with the IOC. If you read my August 2009 blog on P&G’s sponsorship deal with the NFL, and subsequently followed P&G’s wonderful ‘Proud Sponsor of Moms’ activation of its USOC partnership across Vancouver 2010, you probably weren’t surprised either. It was an inevitable next step in the colonisation of a new(ish) piece of Olympic white space by P&G – using sport to market to women.
P&G’s strategy is as simple as it is brilliant.
1. Large numbers of women watch sports, but because sports marketing is so male-oriented, no one is talking to them: P&G decided to own that white space.
2. There are certain sports, and certain events, which very large numbers of women watch and enjoy. In the US, the NFL is the most popular; globally, it’s the Olympics. P&G decided to own those events for its brands.
If you’re not familiar with how P&G activated its USOC deal around the Vancouver Olympics, celebrating the unsung role played by Mom, it’s worth your time. Here are a couple of sports from the campaign, created by W+K in Portland.
Evidently, the campaign paid off big time for P&G, apparently generating $100m in incremental sales. As the company’s North American VP Kirk Perry said on Wednesday at the launch of the IOC partnership.
“We had a terrific run in Vancouver, and realized the potential on a global basis. It became obvious the next step wasd to expand to other markets around the world.’
It will be fascinating to see how P&G’s move into this white space impacts on the Olympics, and maybe on sports marketing as a whole.
How will other Olympic sponsors react now that they know what P&G’s thematic territory will be around London 2012?
How will P&G’s competitors react – will we, for example, see them move into ambush sponsorships with Olympic sports?
Will other traditionally male-oriented rights owners attempt to get in on the action and create new female-oriented sponsorship platforms?
Will male-oriented sports sponsors re-engineer their marketing to appeal more to women? On which subject, take a look at this fascinating piece by Janie Curtis from Forbes.
And finally, I wonder how former IOC TOP partner Johnson & Johnson is feeling about P&G colonising the Olympic white space they pioneered with their ‘Thanks Mom’ campaign around Beijing 2008?
By Tim Crow on July 30th, 2010
Tags: Default, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, Vancouver 2010
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Brilliant, never seen the adverts above, but they gave me goose bumps, think they would make my ‘mom’ cry like a baby and then wonder why I never made it as that cricketer she ferried around for 12 years of her life…long live sporty mums, and don’t forget those competitive dads either!!!
Absolutely agree. Really like this strategy.
Interesting that it was the mums of Paula Radcliffe (Pat), Usain Bolt (Jennifer) and Michael Phelps (Debbie) all taking centre stage at P&G’s IOC launch announcement in London this week. You have to applaud this tact. For a start, mums (even those of superstars) are easier to tie down to appearance dates and don’t have rigid training schedules to adhere to. They offer a different perspective/content for media & consumers alike, don’t have press officers to report into restricting what they can & can’t say and better still, they aren’t already signed up to another 4 or 5 official (and unofficial) Olympic brands all trying to achieve stand-out.
I especially lke that Paula Radcliffe’s mum is called Pat. Champion name – all the best Mums are called Pat in my experience.
Really interested to see such a major company appealing to women through sport. Very wise of them to pick the Olympics as the vehicle – unlike most sports which have a 70:30 male:female viewership, the Beijing Olympics were watched worldwide by more women than men.
The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (www.wsff.org.uk) recently published a report called Prime Time which examines the commercial potential of women’s sport, which concludes that there is a strong case for commercial partnerships. Surprisingly even for most women’s sport the viewers tend to still be male sports fans who just enjoy watching quality sport and dont care whether it’s mens or womens.
Agree with Jon, definite goosebumps from that first one. It’s basic passion branding: what are Mum’s more passionate about than their kids?