Marketing the 2018 Winter Olympics

Although the 2018 Winter Olympic Games are still a few months away, marketing has been in full swing for some time. Already, the list of global marketing sponsors for the PyeongChang Games is posted on the official website.

• Official Olympic partners include Coca-Cola, Alibaba, Atos, Bridgestone, Dow, GE, Intel, Omega, Panasonic, P&G, Samsung, Toyota, and Visa.
• Official Winter Games partners include McDonald's, KT (Korea Telecomm), The North Face, Korean Air, Samsung, Hyundai/Kia, SK, LG, Lotte, and Posco.

The official Twitter page has 200k followers; official FB page has nearly 500k followers; official Instagram account has 33k followers; plus there's a Weibo account for the many hundreds of thousands of Asian fans.

NBC is selling advertising for the televised games...and sales are quite strong. The advertising world has changed a bit since the Sochi Winter Games, so viewers are likely to be exposed to many more 6-second commercials than last time.

NBC is also segmenting the market for coverage: "We are getting deeper into the mindset and motivations of Olympic viewers … we are not looking at demographics, but leaning more toward psychographics," says the CMO of NBC Sports Group. With content tailored for each segment, NBC expects better viewer numbers (which helps advertisers reach the people they're trying to reach).