Samsung, McDonald’s and General Electric Sweep TOP Sponsor Gold, Silver, and Bronze
P&G Stumbles, Omega (Finally) Shines

U.S. Labour Day Weekend 2016, Austin, Texas — The Global Language Monitor has announced that Nike has taken its first ever Gold for the Top Ambush Marketing Campaign. Pepsi took the Silver outdistancing Top Sponsor (and global competitor) Coke by a Brand Affiliation Index (BAI) score of 130.40 to 89.59, a 40% advantage. Ever-strong Siemens AG won the Bronze, even though GE, its major global competitor, nipped Siemens by 5.78 BAI points.
This all according to the exclusive 2016 Rio Summer Olympics Brand Scorecard available now for download.



Among the Top Sponsors, Samsung more than doubled the score of a resurgent McDonald’s. McDonald’s Silver Medal performance was its top finish since at least the Vancouver Games. GE took the Bronze with its highest ever score of 129.98.
The Games of the XXXI Olympiad recently concluded on August 21, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The biggest surprise among all marketers was newcomer Under Armour breaking into the Top Fifteen overall and outdistancing six of the Top Sponsors.
Not all Ambush Marketers are ‘stealth’ marketers per se. Some like Under Armour, a prime Non-affiliated Marketer (NAM) are top of mind in the global audience because of their relevant products and target markets. Nevertheless, this makes Under Amour a prime example of a ‘value leak’ and the recipient of an Olympic Economic Value Unit worth up to several hundred million dollars for this Olympiad,
Samsung more than doubled the score of a resurgent McDonald’s. McDonald’s Silver Medal performance was its top finish since at least the Vancouver Games. GE took the Bronze, a remarkable feat for a B2B enterprise.




GLM is continuing its analysis of such Economic Value Units and how they apply to global athletic events such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cups and to lesser extent the Commonwealth, Pan-American, and Asian Games, and the like. There is little question that the IOC is quite cognizant of the consequences of the of EVUs, but other than further tightening it restrictions against the usage of the Olympic ‘elements,’ such as the rings and nomenclature, little has been done to tighten and/or eliminate the presence of ‘Value Leaks’.
The awards are determined by Global Language Monitor’s (GLM) Brand Affiliation Index (BAI), a proprietary, longitudinal study that analyzes the global association between (and among) individual brands and their competitors or, in this case, the Rio Summer Games. In the study, The Global Language Monitor measured several dozen factors, closely examining all marketing movement extending from London 2012 to projections for Tokyo 2020.
GLM has been tracking the Olympics in this manner since the Beijing Summer Games.

About the Study
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Read the Stories behind the Stories — The 2016 Rio Summer Olympics Brand Scorecard.– and there were more twists on the road to the Rio Summer Games 2016 than the hottest telenovela on BrazilianTV!
GLM’s analysis is part of GLM’s on-going longitudinal study stretching back to the Summer Games in Beijing (2008) and forward to the Winter Games in Beijing in 2022. The study uses GLM’s Brand Affiliation Index (BAI) to track how often brand names are linked to the Olympics in global print and electronic media and social networks. GLM also uses the Entity Affiliation Index (EAI), to track non-branded entities in the same manner. The Zika virus is such a non-branded entity.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were won or lost depending on the the all-important BAI ranking.of the articular TOP Sponsor. For the first time the concept of Economic Value Unit is introduced to try to capture the actual values of an Ambush Marketers effort.
The figure below shows the final scores of all the Top Sponsors and Non-affiliated Marketers for the Rio Summer Games of 2016.

The figure below shows the change in scores from from Week 1 measurements to to the final BAI measurement of the Rio Games.

There was an unprecedented amount of change since our ’18 Months Out, measurement. This seems to reflect the continuous flow of negative stories surrounding the Rio Olympics during that period. Negative Olympic-related stories: impeaching and subsequent replacement of the president, the emerging global Zika emergency, missed construction deadlines. poor ticket sales, toxic water venues, and the like.
NBC optimistically maintained its average 26 million viewers, a 15% decline from the 2012 Summer Games’ draw of 31.1 million viewers and a 17.5 rating. (Rio’s ratings reflect NBC’s Total Audience Delivery that includes streaming and various other NBC-owned cable properties.
GLM’s pre-Olympic analysis found combined BAI references at 1.5% of London.

The Terra Cotta medal, first awarded to Omega after the Sochi Winter Games in 2014, represents the least successful marketing campaign by a TOP Sponsor.

This year’s recipient is Procter & Gamble (P&G). As shown below, Procter & Gamble plummeted to Its Lowest BAI Level at least since the Beijing Olympics.
This is a shocking result for a company that finished as the NO. 1 TOP Sponsor at Sochi. GLM actually combined all P&G branded entities advertised at the Games.

GLM uses its proprietary algorithmic services to perform brand audits, enabling organizations to judge their brand performance between and among their competitors and their peers. The higher the BAI (Brand Affiliation Index) the closer the brand affiliation with the primary brand, in this case the RIO Summer Olympics.
Of course, not all Ambush Marketers plan to steal the Olympic glow from their competitors, a cost estimated to be up to $1 billion, fully loaded, over a four-year Olympiad. Therefore, GLM uses the term Non-affiliated Marketers (NAM) for those, like Under Armour, who seem to engender a false impression of Olympic sponsorship, our research shows, because immense presence in associated categories and size,
About the Global Language Monitor
Austin-Texas-based Global Language Monitor analyzes and catalogues the latest trends in word usage and word choices and their impact on the various aspects of culture, with a particular emphasis upon Global English. This exclusive ranking is based upon GLM’s Narrative Tracking technology. NarrativeTracker analyzes the Internet, blogosphere, the top 300,000 print and electronic news media, as well as new social media sources (such as Twitter) as they emerge. The words, phrases and concepts are tracked in relation to their frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets.
In 2003, The Global Language Monitor (GLM) was founded in Silicon Valley by Paul J.J. Payack on the understanding that new technologies and techniques were necessary for truly understanding the world of Big Data, as it is now known. GLM provides a number of innovative products and services that utilize its ‘algorithmic services’ to help worldwide customers protect, defend and nurture their branded products and entities. Products include ‘brand audits’ to assess the current status, establish baselines, and competitive benchmarks for current intellectual assets and brands.
These services are currently provided to the Fortune 500, the Higher Education market, high technology firms, the worldwide print and electronic media, and the global fashion industry, among others.
For more information, call 1.512.801.6823, email info@LanguageMonitor.com, or visit www.LanguageMonitor.com.
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