Peter Foss, president of Olympic sponsorship and corporate sales for GE, spent a few minutes talking with SportsBusiness Journal correspondent Jay Weiner on Monday during the grand opening of the GE Imagination Center in Beijing.

Foss discussed the purpose of the center, GE's role in China and the benefits of having an office next door to Dick Ebersol.

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What’s the purpose of the GE Imagination Center exhibit? Why do this?
Foss: It’s really for identification. GE, from a standpoint of brand awareness and company awareness, had an opportunity to highlight our technologies. Here in China, up until two years ago when we became an Olympic sponsor and really began focusing on this area, not many people knew GE, they didn’t know who we were and what we did.

Was becoming a TOP sponsor purely a China play?
Foss: It was a China play. It was also a natural extension of the relationship that NBC has had with the IOC. Clearly, it fit into a strategy we have for growth, big growth, here in Asia. It is not only about the Olympics, it’s about the other $250 billion that’s being spent on infrastructure throughout China. We’re an infrastructure company. You’ve got 200 cities with over 1 million people. You’re going to build airports, hospitals, production of energy, power plants, water — it’s all stuff that we do.

How do you measure how your sponsorship is doing?
Foss: From an incremental growth standpoint, we can look and identify about $700 million of business that’s directly related to the Olympics here in Beijing.

So has that business already paid for the TOP sponsorship?
Foss: Oh, I wouldn’t say that. … It’s revenue, not profit I’m talking about. It isn’t just about the revenue piece. You’ve got the marketing pieces and the PR pieces and the hospitality pieces. We’ll entertain upward of 2,200 customers here. You add that up, it’s more than just paying for a sponsorship. But they are all aimed at awareness of our brand. It’s been very good for us.

Is this also about building the brand in the United States?
Foss: No. I think we’re well-known in the U.S. If people don’t know GE, they’re sleeping, they’re Rip Van Winkle or something. But here, to be able to associate with a brand that’s known globally and is well-respected, like the Olympic brand, has been valuable. We’ve done surveys here already. Brand awareness has increased dramatically. Frankly, GE translates in to GM, so they thought we made cars.

What’s the relationship between this piece of the business and the NBC piece of the business?
Foss: My office is next to Dick [Ebersol’s] in New York. He’s very supportive of our sponsorship. We came up to speed much quicker than we would have on our own because of Dick’s relationships with the IOC. The minute we announced the sponsorship, I was over here the next week in front of vice mayors, people like that. Dick can do that.