Late September and early October sees IOC TOP sponsor P&G begin to roll out its global campaign for the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games: once again its Olympic work revolves around the ‘Thank You Mum’ extension of its umbrella ‘Proud Sponsor Of Mums’ positioning.
A central TV spot, with echoes of its award winning London 2012 creative and debuting on a market-by-market basis, covers familiar territory as its focuses on the idea that ‘before the world discovers an Olympic athlete, it was their mothers who saw their potential’.
The work asks sports fans worldwide to remember that: ‘This winter, as we celebrate the athletes of the world, do not forget the person who encouraged them to get this far: their mother.’
September saw the commercial appear in The Netherlands
where it drove viewers to a core P&G ‘Bedankt Mam / Thank You Mum’ website for more information on the Dutch campaign.
While in October, the same spot ran in France under the ‘Merci Maman / Thank You Mum’ tagline
and again the TV work is supported by a French P&G Winter Olympic campaign website.
Also, in the USA, the FMCG behemoth has now begun rolling out brand-specific Winter Olympic campaigns.
For example, as the cold and flu season gets under way in mid October, P&G launches a Vicks family campaign for sub-brand DayQuil and NyQuil fronted by US alpine skier and Sochi 2014 hopeful Ted Ligety.
The 29-year-old athlete has partnered with DayQuil & NyQuil on a Facebook-led initiative built to help him train for the chance to compete in the Russian Winter Games.
Consumers can follow Ted’s training for Sochi by ‘liking’ NyQuil on Facebook (at https://www.facebook.com/NyQuil).
The campaign background is built on the idea that Ligety needs to train year round and thus spends his working life travelling to freezing locations around the world.
And with no time to spare to take off for sick days, it states that he depends on DayQuil to help him power through his worst cold symptoms during the day and NyQuil to get to sleep with a cold.
‘I love skiing and with it comes winter. I’m travelling the world year around chasing snow, training and racing. I’m often skiing in subzero conditions, pushing myself to improve,’ explains Ligety.
‘Unfortunately, colds don’t take a break when I am preparing for a big competition and that’s why I need to rely on Vicks DayQuil & NyQuil to relieve my cold symptoms and help me on my path to Sochi.’
This is the key endurance message Ligerty is spreading to Americans through the winter marketing campaign as he encourages consumers to power through anything winter throws at them.
NyQuil is not new to sports star led campaign’s based around the idea that there is no time to spare to take sick days.
For the last 12 months or so the brand has been running an NFL campaign fronted by New Orleans Saints Quarterback Drew Brees based around the same creative idea and incentivising consumer engagement with the lure of the trip to the 2013 Super Bowl in Indianapolis.
Neither is Ligety himself new to Facebook-focused sponsorship work. The skier is also sponsored by financial services outfit Putnam Investments, for whom he worked on a Facebook-led ‘A View From The Top’ project in 2011.
Comment:
The new Ligerty/Vicks partnership is a small part of P&G’s long-standing sponsorship of The Olympics and of the US Olympic team.
‘We are excited to be working with world class athlete, Ted Ligety, and while it is obvious he has no time for a sick day in his training, Vicks understands that no American has time for a cold to slow them down, either,’ says Vicks North America Marketing Director Dave Tomasi.
‘Harsh winter weather conditions can be brutal for anyone with a cold, and our hope is that all suffering will turn to both DayQuil & NyQuil to help them fight their worst cold symptoms this season.’
There is, unsurprisingly, no mention of the incident in the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics when Alain Baxter made British Olympic history by becoming the first UK skier to win an alpine Olympic medal (bronze) and then found himself disqualified by the IOC after he failed a drugs test for trace amounts of methamphetamine which came from a Vicks inhaler he had bought in the USA.
Baxter had been unaware that the Vicks contents in the US were different from those found in the UK version. The International Ski Federation accepted his explanation and banned him for the minimum of three months.
Links
P&G Bedankt Mam Website
P&G Merci Maman Website
http://www.enviedeplus.com/tag/merci-maman
NyQuil Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/NyQuil
Ted Ligety Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ted-Ligety/118675723439?directed_target_id=0
P&G Thank You Mum Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/thankyoumom
P&G Website
Ligety & Putnam Investments Facebook
