Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent said none of the seats the company was given
to the London Games for being an IOC TOP sponsor are "are going empty.”
Kent said, “We have people that are making sure that we don’t have any
empty seats and we have usage of our tickets. That’s the key, usage rate
of our tickets” (Fox Business, 7/30). Kent added, “We not only
have brought a great number of partners (and) customers, but also we
have worked with youth in Britain and given the opportunity for those
tickets to be used by people that are termed as ‘future flames,’ ‘young
consumers,’ etc, youth from the street games that we also support.” The
company has a “very, very high usage of tickets from all the tickets
that have been allocated to us as a partner of the Olympic Games.” But
he added, “I’m not sure that the empty seats are solely the
responsibility of sponsors and partners of the IOC. I think perhaps
there may be other reasons that I would not know about.” Meanwhile, Kent
said of Coca-Cola’s Olympic sponsorship, “I don’t think about it as a
typical sponsorship. This is a long partnership that started in 1928. I
couldn’t see a better fusion of our ideals, values and those of the
Olympic Games of enthusiasm, of fair play, of excitement, of bringing
communities from all around the world together. That’s very much in-line
with our own values and our own beliefs and heritage.” Despite the
difficulty in quantifying ROI for the company, Kent said Coca-Cola can
"count the amount of mentions, of amount of positive basically
relationships that are generated with our brands, we can count those" ("Quest Means Business," CNN Int'l, 7/30).
TIME IS ON MY SIDE: CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla noted IOC
TOP sponsor Omega is the official timekeeper for the Olympics and the
“only sponsor whose name may be visible within a venue.” Omega President
& CEO Stephen Urquhart said it is “difficult to give you a dollar
figure” on all the visual impressions the company gets from its
sponsorship. However, he said it is "very important to the brand" that
spectators and viewers see the Omega name. Urquhart: "It’s also
important all we do around below the line and above the line to explain
what timekeeping is all about” (“Squawk on the Street,” CNBC, 7/31).
