We at CEC have caught the Olympic fever and wanted to share with you a post from Karen Combs, a researcher with our sister program, the Market Research Executive Board, about her take on the games and some fun connections to the business world.

I’ll admit it: I’m a bit distracted in my excitement for the upcoming Olympic Games.  I can watch any sport as long as it’s got the Olympic rings tied to it, and I’m gearing myself up for two weeks of badminton, indoor cycling, and Greco-Roman wrestling.

So to help focus my distracted energy, I will use this space over the next few weeks to link to interesting business-related Olympic news.  If you are as keyed up about the Olympics as I am, this blog will help make your distraction a bit more beneficial to your job.

Check back often, as I’ll post new articles as I find them.  And please share your own interesting finds in the comments section below.  And, CEC members, for more general consumer insights check outtrends from our sister program, Iconoculture.

• Top 10 Olympic Ads-compiled by our friends at the Marketing Leadership Council, this list show a number of ways to feature the Olympic Games: take the perspective of the fan, the athlete, the families.  Some are meant to empower, others are meant to tug at the heart strings, all are worth a look.
• Olympic Gold Mine-Alan Wurtzel of NBC Universal shares details of their Billion Dollar Research Lab with Research magazine.  He shares interesting perspective in cross-platform media consumption and where he thinks this type of research is headed next.
• U.S. Athletes Commercial Interruption-This Washington Post article outlines Rule 40 of the US Olympic Committee athlete’s code of conduct, which says that competitors cannot market themselves through companies that aren’t official Olympic sponsors 10 days before The Games through 3 days after competition wraps up.  The rule has sports managers yelling foul and fretting about 1^st amendment rights and favoritism for official Olympic sponsors.
• 100 Years of Olympic Marketing-The IOC site provides a quick glance of marketing The Games.  Ad signage was permitted in Olympic venues for the first and only time in Paris in 1924, the first Olympic Torch Relay was organized by Berlin in 1936, and 1972 was the first time rights to use the official emblem of The Games were sold.  The 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City were the first to demonstrate the balance between a commercial agenda and the Olympic image (yay, Market Research!)
• Why Women Watch the Olympics (but Tune Out Other Sports)-Time.com profiled a study inCommunication, Culture, & Critique which found that although more women than ever play sports in high school and college, there has not been a commensurate uptick in female sports viewership.  The study postulates that “women’s TV sports consumption habits were more mediated by their personal schedule than by team schedules or TV schedules.”  The exception seems to be for the Olympic Games, because the television packaging provides easy-to-follow narratives of athletes’ lives—you do not need to follow them over a full season to learn about their trials and triumphs.
• Was It Worth It?  Debt-Ridden Greeks Question the Cost of the 2004 Olympics-also on Time.com (which has a great Olympics sub-section on their Web site); this article presents a less talked about side to the Games: What happens after the torch goes out.  With the benefit of hindsight, the authors interview Greek athletes and those in the sports world to see how they feel about their turn as Olympic host in 2004.

Related CEC Blog Posts:

• What the Olympics Can Teach Communicators
• Branding and the London Olympics
• 2012 Summer Reading List for Communicators

CEC Related Resources:

• Differentiate Your Corporate Brand
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Social Media Strategy