Going for the Green

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This bounty buys each company the privilege of putting official Olympic symbols and themes into its advertising. In addition, there are other perquisites. The 32 sponsors, all of which plan to entertain employees and customers at the Games, will be allowed to buy blocks of tickets amounting to almost 10% of the total supply of 7.7 million. Atlantic Richfield, for instance, plans to buy some 18,000 tickets. Some sponsors will also be permitted to sell their products at the sites of the events. Coca-Cola, the official soft drink of the Games, plans to set up 100 kiosks at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and other locales. Another sponsor, Fuji Photo, hopes to flood the Games with its green-white-and-red boxes of film.

Sponsors are making sure that no one misses their Olympic support. First Interstate, the official banking sponsor, crowned its Los Angeles skyscraper with a 26-ft. lighted replica of the Olympic stars-in-motion logo. Fuji plastered the company name and Olympic symbols on a 164-ft. blimp and flew it on a publicity tour from North Carolina to California.

For the sponsors, the thrill of victory will come from a gain in sales. They were given support in February by a survey in Advertising Age, which reported that one-third of consumers said they would be more inclined to buy a product if it were tied to the Games. Still, some sponsors are concerned that their message will be diluted by the superabundance of advertising with Olympic themes. By limiting the number of full-fledged sponsors, the Los Angeles committee tried its best to create an elite group. This compares with the rug-bazaar atmosphere of the Lake Placid Winter Games in 1980, when 381 brands wore the official label.

Yet a host of other companies have found ways to get into the 1984 act in one way or another. Some 38 firms will be official suppliers for the Games, 44 have contributed to the U.S. Olympic Committee's training effort, and about 200 support American track-and-field competitors. Result: Muzak, for instance, will be entitled to tout itself as the official supplier of canned music to the Games, and Rolex can call its products the official watches of the U.S. equestrian team. The waters of the Games are a pool of confusion. Perrier is the official mineral water of the Olympics, while Los Angeles' Arrowhead is the official drinking water, and Sparklett's, another Southern California firm, provides the official water for the U.S. track-and-field trials.

Fuji thought it pulled a coup when it anted up more than $4 million to become a full sponsor after Eastman Kodak rebelled at the price. But then Kodak struck a quick deal to become the sponsor of the U.S. track-and-field team for less than $2 million. Complains Fuji Vice President Carl Chapman: "It is confusing. The public cannot make sense of all the different symbols."

The problem is worsened by companies that make no sponsorship claim but implicitly tie themselves to the Games. American Tobacco, whom the Los Angeles committee would not touch with a vaulter's pole, is boosting Lucky Strike Filters with an Olympic-trip sweepstakes. The makers of Nike shoes have given an Olympic look to their TV commercials and billboards by casting them with Track Star Mary Decker.