"New plays for the Games; Marketers look beyond TV in quest to engage Olympics audience" by Brian Steinberg, Globe Correspondent | June 18, 2008
Winchester gymnast Alicia Sacramone may not be your next-door neighbor, but a Bank of America-sponsored website lets you talk to this Olympic hopeful as if she were.
As part of its marketing campaign surrounding the Beijing Olympics, Bank of America has launched www.americascheer.com to allow supporters of Team USA to record messages, upload supportive videos, photos, or letters, and in the process learn about its new Olympics-themed financial products.
The bank, which has been a US Olympic Team sponsor since 1992, is just one of a handful of local companies hoping their marketing pitches will seep through the clutter during the Olympics. Others include Framingham-based Staples Inc., the official office furniture supplier for the games; Manulife Financial Corp.'s Boston investment business John Hancock Funds; and Reebok International Ltd., whose corporate parent Adidas Group has a major marketing campaign built around Chinese basketball star and Reebok endorser Yao Ming.
Advertisers like to align themselves with the Olympics because the contests have global reach and often lure viewers who are more attentive than the average couch potato at a time when there isn't an abundance of new content on TV. The Games also offer marketers a chance to reach a broad swath of consumers with messages that play up on Olympic themes of inspiration, hard work, and athleticism. And this year's games give companies the added benefit of getting their brands in front of the burgeoning Chinese market.
So far, Bank of America's effort has been low-key.
Since the site launched in April on NBC's "Today Show," the Charlotte, N.C., financial-services company has opted to use public relations to get the word out."Yeah, I've heard the Morgan Freeman voice-overs on the adverts playing on tv, so PLEASE don't try to beat us over the head with Chinese repression, agenda-pushing MSM!
If BUSINESS and the U.S. OLYMPIC TEAM ain't giving a shit, I'd appreciate it if my Zionist-controlled, agenda-pushing AmeriKan MSM would cease and desist with the propaganda.
Hey, if you find the word Tibet in the article!
