General Electric’s Healthcare unit is banking on the hip image of Salt Lake City speed skating gold medalist Apolo Anton Ohno by naming the 2006 prospect its first spokesman to promote a newly minted U.S. Olympic team partnership. GE owns U.S. rights through its global Olympic sponsorship agreement launched this year.
The endorsement by Ohno, a recent double gold medalist at short track’s World Cup in Seoul, focuses on advances in medical technology that United Kingdom-based GE Healthcare is providing to U.S. Olympians. Those advances include portable ultrasound imagery devices and cardiovascular testing.
Injured athletes can wait hours for medical testing results, while portable ultrasound delivers news in minutes, Ohno said in a phone interview. “It can happen right next to the ice rink,” he said.
Ohno is represented for endorsements by Janey Miller of Janey Miller Management.
› TURIN 24/7: Despite the International Olympic Committee’s zero tolerance of venue banners during the Games, Olympic sponsors find ways to achieve high public visibility. Global sponsor Atos Origin, which owns rights in the information technology category, is increasing its presence for the Turin Winter Games by more subtle means.
“We are Big Brother, watching everything,” said Atos Origin’s Olympic Winter Games program director, Claude Philipps, by telephone from Turin, where 1,800 people, including 1,000 volunteers, will be deployed in February.
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| Apolo Anton Ohno (left) will tell how GE Healthcare is there for U.S. athletes. |
The main technology center now operational in Turin is the most secure ever and will, for the first time, capture data tied to every Games credential issued, 90,000 altogether, in an identity management system. Philipps said technology has been fine-tuned to make it easier for pre-designated groups of credentialed officials to receive urgent messages by phone and e-mail in real time.
Additionally, Atos Origin programs will control the new International Skating Union judging system for Olympic figure skating — maligned at the 2002 Salt Lake Games for judging irregularities — that randomly selects scores from the panel and displays them minus judges’ identities.
DHL’S PACKAGE: Worldwide shipper DHL acquired rights as a U.S. Olympic team supplier only one month before the August 2004 Olympics, then leveraged the tie-in by purchasing advertising exclusivity on NBC’s telecasts from Athens to promote “the new DHL” in the U.S. market.
DHL’s Karen Jones, vice president of brand, advertising and promotions, declined to characterize how the company’s affiliation with the U.S. team affected sales revenue. But she said market research indicated that consumers’ “unaided awareness” of DHL in the U.S. marketplace rose from 11 percent before the Games to 50 percent after.
With more time leading to Turin, DHL is activating its rights by taking on presenting sponsorship of the longtime U.S. Olympic Spirit Award, and a parallel campaign to invite children ages 8-12 to submit Olympic spirit cards. The cards will be distributed among U.S. Olympians competing in the 2006 Games. DHL also named a roster of past Olympians as ambassadors, including figure skating legend Scott Hamilton.
WORLD WATCH: The 2005 FIFA Interactive World Cup began Saturday in London. It features Electronic Arts’ No. 1-selling FIFA World Cup video game played on Microsoft’s Xbox consoles. Video gamers, 4,300 in all, will compete in eight cities worldwide to reach the Dec. 18 final. … Spyder ski apparel founder David Jacobs is yielding the title of company president to son Jake, who, at age 16 in the mid-1970s, came home from an Argentina skiing trip with a trendy padded ski racing sweater. David Jacobs founded Spyder in 1978 with a line of similar products. David remains CEO. … After a recent report in London by The Telegraph that he is “in talks” to become an adviser to organizers of the 2012 Summer Games, former IOC marketing chief Michael Payne would neither confirm nor deny the validity of the report in an e-mail response. … Former USOC director of national governing body marketing Steve Brunner has launched King of the Mountain sports marketing. He plans to target Olympic federations as consulting clients, joining a client roster of two professional cycling events and a start-up pro wrestling league, Real Pro Wrestling. … Former General Motors sports marketing manager Matt Pensinger has joined Chicago-based marketing agency Relay Worldwide as senior director of sponsorship consulting.
Steve Woodward can be reached at swoodward@sportsbusinessjournal.com
