Olympics creates country advocates
The numbers are in. Buoyed by a domestic viewing audience of 842 million, who tuned into China’s “show of the century” opening ceremony, and the trans-Pacific popularity U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps—the Beijing Olympics have set a new benchmark for viewership. Nielson has announced a total global TV audience of 4.4 billion viewers representing two-thirds of the world’s population. Watching TV can hardly be called an action, but can it be a form of advocacy? Yes. Vegging out in front of the TV may not pack the punch of joining in a protest. But it is people’s precious evening hours at home that they’re spending. Sitting on the sofa and tuning in speaks volumes. In addition is the mind-numbing number of people who “tuned in” to the Games on the Internet. In China alone, 102 million people watched the Olympics online. And the Web site of NBC, which had exclusive broadcast rights in the U.S., recorded 30 times more video views than that in Athens four years earlier. Whether the footage presented China in a positive or negative light is of a lesser importance. We all got a prime-time presentation of brand Beijing courtesy of major TV networks around the globe. So long after discussion about the opening ceremony’s artistic direction have ceased, athletes names have faded from the headlines and the exact medal count becomes muddled in our minds, it will be China’s expanded share-of-voice that lives on in our travel plans, business ventures, movie selection and a host of other personal decisions. This goes a long way toward building the soft power that any rising brand (or country brand) needs to catch on with consumers. For China, that means college students selecting a minor in Mandarin, teenagers wearing T-shirts with Chinese words, and kids asking their moms to sign them up for Kung Fu lessons. Call it the global “China Cult”—advocates who are attracted to China’s cultural characteristics. Japan has such a following in Manga and sushi bars—South Korea has such a following in Taekwondo and pop star Rain. It’s not too much of a stretch to trace the trendiness of these two cultures to the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Now it’s Beijing’s turn. If Neilson ratings can be viewed as a sign of the times, future marketers may well look back on 2008 as the year China became cool. Watch out for a lot more of brand China on your TV.
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