With Olympic campaigns, even B-to-B marketers go for gold

We all expect the big consumer companies to roll out great new campaigns during the Olympics. And these Games have certainly delivered.

• GE introduced 3 new commercials with its “ecomagination” platform. They use imagery and fanciful situations, such as a crane morphing into an airplane, to demonstrate GE products like fuel-efficient jet engines and wind turbines. Spots were developed by BBDO New York,

• AT&T debuted “We,” promoting the three screens on which viewers can watch the Olympics—TVs, PCs and mobile phones. Spots are created by BBDO New York and BBDO Atlanta.

• Visa is running a campaign called “Go World,” developed by TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles.

What stands out are the business-to-business marketers also debuting new ad campaigns as the 2008 Beijing Olympics got under way. The Beijing Olympics telecasts by NBC (and its several network channels) are expected to reach a global audience of more than 4 billion.

PC maker Lenovo, based in Beijing with U.S. headquarters in Raleigh, NC, introduced an extensive Olympic effort, with a total of 176 ad placements during the games.

Lenovo features the tagline “Exceptionally engineered PCs,” promoting features of its ThinkPad notebooks, as well as the North American launch of its IdeaPad consumer PC. The ads are from Ogilvy Worldwide offices in the US, Australia, and India.

One 60-second spot, called “Sumo,” features flying wrestlers to show how Lenovo’s x300 PC is heavy on features but light in weight.

Watch the Lenovo Olympic Spots at
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1716442424/bclid1716440828/bctid1725276244