Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. Nike softened its tactics, Payne suggests, after realizing that its "campaign was backfiring" and by the time the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney came around, the brand "showed it was an Olympic convert" by becoming an official sponsor. In 1996, Reebok were the official sponsors – but who could tell? This time Nike purchased all available billboard space in the Atlanta area during the Olympic time period to advertise and utilized their sponsored athletes during the Olympics. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. For example, the brand's magazine ads blared: "If you're not here to win, you're a tourist." "The list of no-no's has gotten much longer," says Yi, "and that's partly because of the effective ways that brands including Nike have engaged in ambush marketing through the years. A congratulatory tweet to a gold medalist? All rights reserved. Do Not Sell, The Official 1996 Olympic Games Home Page, NBC Sports Presents The Centennial Olympic Games. All times are ET. We weren’t going to sit back and let Nike’s ambush marketing undermine and trash the very spirit and essence of the Olympic ideal.” By Payne’s account, the USOC was prepared to round up a bunch of silver medalists to speak out against Nike publicly, and drew the brand into a closed-door meeting that nearly came to physical blows. Most stock quote data provided by BATS. ", Yi adds, though, that the IOC has recently loosened up on its Rule 40, which now grants brands that sponsor individual athletes a chance to work with them during the games—even though it retains the ironclad prohibitions against using the Olympics rings and logos, or and even words including "victory," "summer," and "gold.". In 1996, Nike had a marketing moment of Olympic proportions at the Atlanta Games. If the IOC is showing its teeth to transgressor brands today, it cut those teeth in 1996. While Reebok was invited (and paid over $20 million for the pleasure), Nike showed up unannounced and rocked the party. ", These days, brands thinking of ambushing the games have to contend with a set of rules made stricter in large part as a consequence of the 1996 games. Johnson in his gold Nikes. Nike also bought billboards space all over Atlanta to announce: "You don't win silver, you lose gold.". According to Po Yi, an advertising attorney with the New York firm of Venable LLP, "Nike realized that, after the IOC tightened the rules, they could no longer do ambush marketing.". Privacy Policy. As social-savvy marketers have quickly learned, the U.S. Olympic Committee has ironclad regulations, backed by U.S. trademark law, that restrain nonsponsoring brands from saying anything even vaguely evocative of the Olympics. (The United States Olympic Committee did not respond to Adweek's request for comment for this story. During the years they did many creative efforts that were really effective. A WarnerMedia Company. And on July 29, 1996, two pieces of history were made—the athletic kind and the marketing kind. According to Nike spokesperson Charlie Brooks, Nike signed on as a sponsor for the 2000 Sydney games largely because Reebok pulled out of its deal at the last minute. Meanwhile, now that Nike is an official part of the Olympic family, it no longer needs to resort to the kind of guerrilla marketing tactics that got it so much attention two decades back. Morningstar: © 2018 Many critics consider this the most commercial Olympics ever. "And certainly at that time, we were pushing the envelope in terms of those ideas. Adding to the mesmerizing effect were the gold-colored shoes that Johnson wore on the world's fastest feet—a $30,000 pair of lightweight racing spikes given to Johnson by Nike. If the IOC is showing its teeth to transgressor brands today, it cut those teeth in 1996. Anyone who goes over the line will be pushed back. And, no one was going to stop them fro… Instead of paying for an official sponsorship, Nike decided it could get its brand into the 1996 games in other ways—and Johnson's gold shoes were just the beginning. Such tactics infuriated Reebok, which had ponied up a reported $50 million to become an official sponsor, and had a similar effect on Olympic officials. The latter's strategy is to stage a marketing ambush. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. But even though Nike did manage to get lots of cheap media exposure from its ambush marketing, the brand didn't exactly come out of Atlanta a winner. As Payne recounts in his 2012 book Olympic Turnaround: "Athletes, who had devoted their life [sic] to training and just getting to the Olympics, were angry at being positioned as 'failures.' Nike's marketing had a distinctly abrasive edge to it. 10. Clearly, though, Nike hasn't forgotten the Atlanta games and all the attention—good and bad—the brand got there. The brand opened an outsized "Nike Centre" right beside the athletes' village. ... 1996 Nike's Olympic ambush - July 19, 1996: RELATED SITES ", Nike Centre opened up right beside Olympic Village in Atlanta. Except for one little problem: Nike wasn't an Olympic sponsor. The IOC reportedly has a pack of lawyers waiting to pounce on any brand that runs afoul of its rules. That afternoon, sprinter Michael Johnson took the gold in the 400-meter dash after finishing in 43.49 seconds. What's more, according to veteran sports marketer and Columbia University professor Joe Favorito, Nike's marketing shenanigans were largely responsible for Olympic officials taking a hard line on nonsponsoring brands getting anywhere near the Olympics in their marketing. There's a lot of consumer love for the Olympics and the athletes, and that [marketing] just crossed the line for a lot of people. 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