Russia was banned Monday from the upcoming Pyeongchang Paralympics because of its doping past. Time
Toyota will be NBC Olympics’ presenting sponsor of the Paralympics in March as NBC Olympics offers more than 250 hours of coverage across its platforms, with 94 hours on television compared to 50 hours from the Winter Paralympic Games in 2014.
"Without question, our increase in coverage – nearly double the hours televised in Sochi – would not be possible without the support of Toyota,” Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics, said in a statement.
During Sunday’s Super Bowl, Toyota will have an advertisement with no cars in the first spot after kickoff to help spread word of its evolution into what it calls a mobility company. That emphasis will continue with eight to 10 carless commercials during the Winter Games in February, part of a campaign to tout Toyota’s venture into emerging technologies to help people with physical barriers to move.
"We have a long-term investment in the Olympics,” Toyota’s Ed Laukes tells USA TODAY Sports. “We believe in the power of the Rings.”
Laukes, who is group vice president of Toyota division marketing at Toyota Motor North America, declined to say what it will cost Toyota to advertise on the Super Bowl and in the Olympics but he called it the largest one-month media investment in company history.
Dan Lovinger, executive vice president of advertising sales for NBC Sports Group, said other companies are also buying advertising on the Super Bowl and in the Olympics and that about 30 percent of the ad spend is coming from advertisers buying both events.
"One might think that the audiences are quite similar, but it’s really less than half of the viewers who watch both the Super Bowl and the Olympics,” Lovinger says. “So if you’re an advertiser that likes to make a big splash and make your point, it really does benefit you to buy both of these properties because you are growing your reach significantly when you do.”
This is the first time since 1992 that one network has aired the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics in the same year. But back then CBS had the game on Jan. 26 with the Games beginning on Feb. 8. This time the megaevents are separated by four days.
"So (then) you were able to pace a media spend, if you were an advertiser, across a month rather than a week or two weeks,” Lovinger says. “So the challenge is, quite frankly, we’re asking people to spend a lot of money in a very condensed period of time and the out-of-pocket cost is significant.”
Super Bowl ads cost an average north of $5 million for 30 seconds. (Companies buying ads in the Super Bowl and the Olympics generally required a single negotiation, Lovinger says.) Plus, in addition to the cost of airing Super Bowl spots, companies also have the production costs of making the ads plus the cost of social and digital campaigns promoting them.
"A lot of advertisers, when they’re advertising in the Super Bowl,” Lovinger says, “they have very, very elaborate social plans to see their spots talked about across the social landscape, (which) only preps or primes the pump for their Olympic participation just four days later.”
Another benefit of having the events so close together “is all that sweat equity in creating what’s going to be a terrific Super Bowl commercial can be amortized across the Olympic Games,” Lovinger says. Super Bowl spots, he says, can run as is during the Games or with minor tweaks, allowing companies to “amortize the time and cost and energy” put into building them.
Toyota has deals with the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee designating it as official mobility sponsor. Toyota is also sponsoring seven U.S. athletes in the Paralympics. The company’s global ad campaign centered on its mobility initiative is called “Start Your Impossible.”
Laukes calls freedom of movement a basic human right and says the Super Bowl is a good place to evangelize the message because “it’s the largest viewing audience anywhere in a single event” and the Olympics and Paralympics are a good place as well because they cross all boundaries and bring people together.
"So just the girth of the advertising buy and the brand presence and the messaging around the campaign,” he says, “I don’t think anybody will miss it.”
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