Korean firms to engage in Olympic marketing

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry said Monday that six out of every 10 big firms are expecting extra demand to occur during the London Summer Olympic season.

In a recent survey of the country’s 100 largest companies, about 35 percent said they plan to launch marketing activities related to the Summer Olympics, higher participation than the Korea-Japan joint World Cup in 2002 and the Beijing Olympics in 2008 which recorded 19.7 percent and 27.3 percent, respectively.

When asked how they expect to benefit through Olympic marketing, 71.4 percent said their company image will likely improve and another 23.4 percent said they also expect to see jumps in sales.

“Businesses are looking forward to the Olympic impact more because consumer spending has shrunk due to the economic crisis in the eurozone recently,” said KCCI officials.

“The local firms are planning to put sports marketing to use rather than cutting down on their spending for market expansion and sales increase.”

Of those taking part in Olympics-related marketing efforts, about 57 percent said they would unveil advertisements that are themed around the London Summer Olympics, while 24 percent responded they would give out prizes for those cheering for the Korean team.

Another 19 percent of firms said they would actually have athletes star in the advertisements. The firms were able to choose multiple answers in the types of marketing activities.

The top 100 companies are sponsoring about one-fifth of the Korean players with SK Telecom financially backing world’s top swimmer Park Tae-hwan and its rival KT supporting the country’s 50-meter pistol Olympic champion Jin Jong-oh.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics is also sponsoring badminton player Lee Yong-dae and Korean Air is backing table tennis star Kim Kyung-ah.

With sports marketing currently taking over about 5 percent of all marketing costs, one-third of the companies sponsor soccer, which is the highest of all categories, followed by baseball, golf and basketball with 28.8 percent, 22.7 percent and 15.2 percent, respectively.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)