The Duchess Effect Meets the London Olympics

 

Kate previously helps London achieve Top Global Fashion Capital status

…  after toppling Lady Gaga for Top Fashion Buzzword

Austin, Texas. May 17, 2012.  The Duchess Effect Meets the Summer Games, indeed.  According to the Global Language Monitor’s  London 2012 Ambush Marketing May 15 Update, even the Summer Games are encountering the Duchess Effect.  The GLM Brand Affiliation Index (BAI), when linked with London  2012, Kate Middleton had a closer brand affiliation that a number of top sponsors including Coke, Adidas, BA and Panasonic, among others.

This again demonstrates the power of the ‘Kate Middleton Brand’.  A Tier 1 Olympic sponsor pays about $160 million for the privilege, plus the attendant advertising fees promoting the relationship that can cost upwards of $500 million over the four-year arrangement.

This would suggest that the Kate Middleton Brand could be valued at nearly a billion dollars or more, just in relationship to Summer Games.

“This can be viewed as a two-edged sword for Sebastian Coe and the International Olympic Committee (IOC),” said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor.  “On the one hand, the Duchess of Cambridge and her husband, are Olympic Ambassadors; on the other hand the Kate Middleton ‘brand scores’ higher that nearly half the paying sponsors, such as, Coke, Adidas, and BA, among many others.”

All perceived Olympic affiliations according to their presence in the global media and statistically linked to the London Games, qualify for GLM’s Ambush Marketing rankings.

The official Olympic sponsors are divided into three tiers: Worldwide Partners, Official Partners, and Official Supporters. GLM tracks over fifty non-affiliated companies that are direct competitors with the Official Olympic sponsors.

Earlier this year, the former Kate Middleton has already helped propel London to the Top Global Fashion Capital ranking for 2011 and was named the Top Fashion Buzzword for 2012 topping even Lady Gaga, the previous year’s winner.

The Official Olympic Mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, fashioned from drops of steel, appear to pose little threat to Kate’s reign.

For these rankings, concluded on May 1, 2012, GLM measured the strength of the brand affiliation for each official Olympic sponsor against those of their primary non-affiliated competitors. Though ‘ambush marketing’ is well understood to mean an organization knowingly exploiting a brand affiliation with the Games without the benefit of official sponsorship.

GLM has been tracking the Olympics since the Athens Games in 2004 and ambush marketing since the Beijing Games in 2008.  For London 2012, GLM began tracking the three tiers of official sponsors since the third quarter of 2011.

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GLM also tracks the brand equity of the athletes before and during the Games.

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About Global Language Monitor:  “We Tell You What the Web is Thinking”

Customized GLM Ambush Marketing Rankings are released monthly up to and following London 2012.  The Ambush Marketing London 2012 May 15 Update report features dozens of charts representing the interrelationship of each company to the Olympic Brand, their competitors, and their partners. In addition, the reports contain exclusive and individualized Narrative Tracker analyses, the most advanced trend tracking analytics available. For more information, individualized reports, or a monthly subscription, call

+ 1 512 801 6823 or email info@LanguageMonitor.com.