Since my post last week on the dilemma facing corporate sponsors of this year’s Beijing Olympics, John Quelch, the eminent Harvard Business School marketing professor, has weighed in on the issue with an article published on the Harvard Business website. Notably, he says marketers are waiting to see if there will  be more unrest in Tibet before finalising spending plans for Olympics-related advertising:

Marketers are not overcommitting funds to Olympics-related brand advertising and promotions and the normal Olympics year advertising boost may be less than expected. Instead of long-term preset media advertising buys, many companies are planning short-term promotional bursts that they can activate as late as July and August if all appears to be in place for a successful, trouble-free Games.

Otherwise, he says Lenovo, the Chinese PC maker that is a first-time global sponsor of the games, has much more at stake than veteran backers such as Visa. Long-time Western sponsors may be pragmatically two-faced, he predicts, putting forward one message for the Chinese market that will tap into the country’s pride at hosting the games, and another, more neutral message for the rest of the world. To my untrained eye, that doesn’t necessarily look like a shift in strategy, just a reflection of the fact that sponsors might have different goals in different markets.

An association with the Olympics used to be something that companies boasted about. Following protests by campaigners critical of China’s behaviour in Tibet and Sudan, exposure to this year’s games has the potential to be a public relations millstone, however.

In today’s FT, for instance, Neville Isdell, the chairman and chief executive of Coca-Cola, lays out his defence of the soft drink maker’s involvement in the Beijing Olympics. Without addressing the recent unrest in Tibet, he says Coke has for two years been “actively engaged” in Darfur, the war-torn province of Sudan.

China has been criticised for its ties to the Sudanese government, whose forces and allied militia have been held responsible for killings and other atrocities in Darfur. Mr Isdell claims it is wrong - and fruitless - to extend that criticism to those seeking to profit from the Beijing games. “Criticism of Olympic sponsors from well-intentioned people will not stop the violence in Darfur,” he declares, preferring to highlight Coke’s work in backing clean water projects in Sudan.

Professors at Wharton have been analysing the dilemma facing Olympic sponsors on the business school’s website. Witold Henisz, a professor who studies political risk management, says:

Corporations that want to sponsor the Games have to navigate the political undercurrents… but they can only do something that will not offend China. That’s a very delicate balance to strike, and it requires enormous diplomatic skill.

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Michael Skapinker says in his latest column that the visit of Nicolas Sarkozy to the UK has been a marketing coup for Emirates. The airline’s name adorns Arsenal’s football stadium, used as one of the venues for the Franco-British love-in last week. This meant that Emirates, which paid more than £100m for the “naming rights” to the ground, was frequently mentioned in the press.

The thinking behind naming rights is that people encounter the brand in a positive context, creating a rosy glow of familiarity that translates into higher sales. But are the purchasing patterns of consumers really influenced by the myriad things that they see as they go about their daily lives?

They can be, according to new research by Jonah Berger, an assistant professor at Wharton business school, and Grainne Fitzsimons, of  Canada’s University of Waterloo. However, I’m not convinced that their findings add much to the marketer’s arsenal.

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