It turns out that appealing to a person’s nationalistic pride during the Olympics is an effective way to attract their business. Who would have thought?
Canadian Tire reported a 17% increase in revenue this last quarter, up from the abysmal $1.99 per share price just one year ago. Chief executive Stephen Wetmore attributes this recent boom to the Sochi Olympics. The Toronto-based company was able to beat out its foreign competitor Target. Wetmore believes that by staying true to the company’s patriotic stance, it will continue to thrive.
Despite the Olympics having come to a close nearly a week ago, there is still one winner who has yet to be named. Not in an event between athletes involving speed and strength, but between advertisers involving numbers and figures.
Marketers poured hundreds of millions of dollars into their advertising efforts during the Olympics, all hoping to win over consumers, but few achieved the success they sought. Most backed medal favourites to help attract positive attention while others supported podium hopefuls on the off-chance they would as well. Regardless, the sponsors of the medal winners and losers had little to do their triumphs among Canadian consumers.
BRONZE: LGBT support
Before the torch was lit, the Sochi Olympics were already wrought with controversy thanks to the host country’s position on LGBT athletes. The public backlash that followed was reflected in the commercials that aired during the Games. Some hilariously blunt, others more subtle, all carrying the same message: Gay was Okay. Perhaps not using those words exactly, but the sentiment was there. Canadian audiences responded favourably to the first pro-LGBT ads and other companies caught on. Soon, a flurry of advertisements came out all pitching their own spin on the political scuffles in Sochi. The campaign was a success for all those in support, tying many companies for the bronze medal.
SILVER: VISA
Visa took full advantage of the growing online presence of the Olympics this year. The company took to the social media giants Twitter and Facebook to spread their message and show support for their athletes. Quickly after medal wins and podium finishes Visa posted mosaics of their athletes including the above image of Charlie White and Meryl Davis. The images were retweeted and liked by internet users across the globe. Visa’s online comeuppance is enough to take home the silver.
GOLD: P&G
Congratulations P&G, for squeezing our eyes dry of tears. Above is one of the first advertisements to be released during these Winter Games and was far and away the most successful. Garnering over 18 million views on YouTube, the ad resonated with Canadian audiences. After all, who doesn’t love their mother? The mom-friendly campaign kept the P&G brand in a positive light and their golden reputation unscratched. Not to mention the estimated $166 million in product purchases it brought in.
The app manages to deliver quality content through a friendly user-interface making it a must-download for any Canadian looking to keep up with the Olympics on their mobile device.
Rating: 5 stars out of 5
With 15 different Olympic sports, 98 sporting events and over 1000 hours of coverage throughout February, it’s hard to find time to sit down and watch all that CBC has to offer this month. CBC has understood our predicament and answered with their very own mobile app.
Its most important feature is the ability to stream all events broadcast on CBC and its Olympic partners live on your phone. The app provides the option of side-by-side streaming, so you don’t miss a second of the action. In practice, the feature makes it considerably easier to switch between streams as opposed to CBC.ca. If you do manage to miss anything, CBC has you covered, providing highlights, recaps and replays of all the events broadcast in the app.
The app, available on iTunes, Google Play Store and Windows Phone Store, has all the information you’ll need for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. It offers everything from athlete profiles to up to the minute Olympic news to photos from that day.
The app itself is pleasant to look at and very easy to navigate around. Most options are brought up in the slide out menu and any additional options can be accessed in just one more tap.
The ads are not intrusive and the commercial advertisements play with near the same regularity as they would if you were to watch it on television. For those willing to pay for an app without ads, you are out of luck. Neither the iTunes store, the Google Play Store nor the Windows Phone Store offer legitimate ad-free alternatives for Canadian consumers.
All in all, the app manages to deliver quality content through a friendly user-interface making it a must-download for any Canadian looking to keep up with the Olympics on their mobile device.
*Note to the reader: This is not a review of the Windows 8 app
After a week long hiatus, Bob Costa is set to return to hosting NBC’s primetime Olympic broadcast tonight. He considers himself almost fully recovered from the conjunctivitis infection that has kept him out of the main anchor spot for the better part of these Olympics.
He has been dutifully resting and recuperating these past few days in his hotel room, but has also managed to keep up to date with the Games in that span. When asked about the injury, Costa said:
“On the injury list of 1 to 10, this is now at about a 2”
Deciphering the slogan of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics should deserve a medal unto itself. Bizarre and misleading, the slogan is every bit as confusing the first time read as the last. The words “Hot.Cool.Yours.” are supposed to represent “the intensity of the sporting battle…the fact that it is a Winter Games… (and) symbolizes personal involvement…”according to the official statement released by the Sochi 2014 Olympic Committee.
The Sochi slogan however, simply reads as a reminder to the heat-related problems happening at the Games today. It reads as an attempt to paint Sochi as a favourable tourist destination and a weak try to accompany the tag line of the Olympics, “This is my Games” which, quite frankly, would have made a better slogan.
To provide some context, slogans from past Olympics have been inspiring, clever and unique to the host countries. For example, the Vancouver Winter Olympics ran with the slogan, “With Glowing Hearts,” quoting a line from the Canadian national anthem. The Athens Summer Olympic Games chose “Welcome Home” citing the fact that the Olympics began in Ancient Greece and were returning home.
When asked to comment, Dmitry Chernyshenko, President of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Committee, stated:
“The slogan of the Winter Games in Sochi, in my opinion, very successfully captures the diversity of Russia’s national character, and the very personal nature of the Games.”
The sweater worn by the American Olympic team during the Olympic opening ceremonies last Friday (Image courtesy of http://www.toledoblade.com)
Perhaps the ugliest sweaters ever donned in the Olympic Games to date sold out last Monday on the American Olympic apparel website. The Ralph Lauren run domain ran out of stock of the American-made Polo branded sweaters within days of first being seen at the Olympic opening ceremonies. It seems unlikely that they will restock.
The sweaters, hand stitched and hand-made in America, are geared towards patriots and Olympic fans alike. Learning from the last Olympic Games, Ralph Lauren found it would be significantly less controversial if the clothing was made in America instead of mass-produced in China. The tactic worked wonders, selling these “ugly sweaters” as described by Twitter users by the hundreds, bringing in close to $192 750.
Each sweater retailed for $595 before they were taken off the site, a steep price for a sweater, but not at all for a Ralph Lauren piece. For those still determined to have, there are still a few being sold online. Postings on eBay range from $600 to over $2500 and, with only 324 of such sweaters in existence, it isn’t that ridiculous to see people paying an outrageous price for them.
But nothing could be quite as ridiculous as those sweaters.
A rather sketchy Audi ad has been found floating around the internet as of late, poking fun at the malfunction at the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Sochi last Friday. The tagline reads, “When four rings is all you need“, referencing one of the Olympic rings remaining closed on February 7th. An Audi representative spoke to Mashable.com on Monday confirming the ad was, in fact, fake.
“This is not an official ad […] it is most likely from an Audi fan.” – Audi representative
The fifth ring fails to expand at the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi on February 7th, 2014
The ad was posted to Reddit.com (www.reddit.com) by user Minusguy on February 10th and was the first known use of the picture.
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