Having just extended its sponsorship as a top-tier Olympics partner through 2020, McDonald's is rolling out its London 2012 marketing plan for the Games, including introducing a #mcolympics hashtag on Twitter to talk up its ongoing commitment to the IOC, which started with the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble.Continue reading...

Of all the sub-brands that the National Football League has been able to create on its stellar rise to sports and TV dominance lately, none is more powerful than The Quarterback.

Sure, there is the Super Bowl, which advertisers love. There is NFL.com, which has become popular. And most NFL teams have been superb at leveraging their own "local" brands with licensed goods and new stadiums, including the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, New York Jets and Houston Texans.

But it's today's celebrity "field generals" who have come to embody the NFL brand, as well as their teams, more than any other factor. And that's why brand marketers including Jockey, Visa and State Farm are happy to see five of the game's best and hottest quarterbacks still playing this weekend in the four TV games comprising the so-called Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs.Continue reading...

Nissan and Buick marketers recognize the advertising juggernaut that the NFL has become. And their brands, like their rivals, are advertising during this month's NFL Playoffs, and many brand are gearing up for record auto-industry spending to advertise during Super Bowl XLVI on February 5.

But Nissan, its Infiniti luxury brand, and GM's Buick brand also have been making a departure from the football-chasing pack by investing more heavily than the rest in special marketing relationships with college sports, both basketball and football. Infiniti and Buick are the car sponsors of NCAA's March Madness basketball tournament.

And in the meantime, Nissan has been ramping up its ties with college football and the Heisman Trophy, signing a new five-year agreement as a "premier partner" with the award that goes to the game's best player each year. "It's a big strategic opportunity for us," Bill Peffer, Nissan's director of marketing communications, told brandchannel. Nissan wil be able to feature the Heisman Trophy in ads, for instance, and bring the hallowed piece of metal with it now on College Football Experience tours that it brings to football-crazy campuses.Continue reading...

The NFL is the most sizzling property in TV advertising these days, and at the moment there seems to be no ceiling on fan and brand interest in riding the momentum. It's already clear that Super Bowl XLVI on February 5 in Indianapolis, to be broadcast by NBC, will go down as the single most lucrative advertising event in television history.

The Comcast-owned broadcast network has sold out of its commercial spot inventory for the Big Game, reportedly at a cost of up to $4 million for each precious 30 second unit of screen time, which is up from about $3 million a year on Fox last year — and about 60 percent since 2001. 

But a month before the Super Bowl, there's still speculation about other aspects of marketing in and around the extravaganza.Continue reading...

The Orange Bowl is one of college football’s oldest bowl games, having taken place annually since 1935. This year’s Orange Bowl on Jan. 4 between the Clemson Tigers and West Virginia Mountaineers features a sponsor that has got a whole slew of public-health organizations feeling pretty fed up with the NCAA: Camacho Cigars.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Cancer Society and eight other groups are asking the NCAA to end the relationship between Camacho and college sports, the Washington Post reports. The sponsorship covers the next three Orange Bowls as well as for next year’s Bowl Championship Series title game. It also “includes a large presence at several game-day events for the maker of Camacho and Baccarat The Game cigars, including lounges where fans can light up,” the Post adds.Continue reading...

The only motorized vehicle involved with National Hockey League games is the Zamboni ice resurfacer, but it is very likely insured by Geico.

The NHL and the 75-year-old insurance company announced Monday that Geico will continue to be the official insurance company of the NHL in the United States. With the deal, for the next few years Geico gets to sponsor the very cool annual outdoor game, the Winter Classic, as well as the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the All-Star weekend when it is held in the States.

For example, the Winter Classic is being held this year on Jan. 2 at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank, which is normally the home of the Philadelphia Phillies. There will be a three-day fan festival before the Philadelphia Flyer and New York Rangers face off that will feature attractions from several sponsoring brands, such as Verizon, Honda, and Geico.Continue reading...

Since the NBA lockout officially ended, teams have been busy making trades, signing free agents, and trying to hold some kind of semblance of training camp as rosters keep shifting and changing. The league has used the time to stop a few different trades for Chris Paul, who plays for the league-owned New Orleans Hornets, and call on key advertisers to get things rolling again.

So far, Anheuser-Busch InBev, PepsiCo’s Gatorade brand, and AutoTrader.com have all signed on to be advertisers with the league again, according to the Wall Street Journal. To the relief of the NBA and NBC, the fact that the season (which starts on Christmas Day) will be 16 games shorter than usual hasn’t affected a single marketing partnership.Continue reading...

It’s been 27 years since gas leaked out of a Union Carbide pesticide plant in India and killed about 15,000 people. It also injured an additional 500,000 and is still causing health problems in the area today, according to the Indian government.

Union Carbide is owned by Dow Chemical, which happens to be one of the sponsors of next summer’s London Olympics, a fact that is not bringing smiles to many people in India. And Dow isn’t just any sponsor. It is the one that the London Organizing Committee has selected to sponsor  a “wrap that will envelope the main Olympic Stadium,” according to the London Telegraph.

“Victims of the accident, as well as former Indian Olympians and officials, have been pressuring Olympic organizers to drop Dow as a sponsor,” the Associated Press reports. “Less than two weeks ago, protesters in Bhopal burned an effigy of the head of the Olympic organizing committee, Sebastian Coe,” who won four Olympic medals for running in the 1980 and 1984 Games. Also burned in effigy was Indian Olympic Association president Vijay Kumar Malhotra, the Telegraph reports. 

One person who is also not excited about Dow’s involvement is a member of the organizing committee, Sir Robin Wales. "I believe the decision to accept sponsorship from Dow Chemical and in particular the decision to have that company so prominently connected to the iconic Olympic Stadium is worthy of a further review,” Wales said, the Telegraph reports. “I am disappointed by the decision not to look again at the deal."

Coe, however, is all for Dow’s involvement.Continue reading...