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By: Jeff Bucki
August 10, 2012
Gold Medal in Marketing: The 1996 Summer Olympics
I was fortunate enough to work at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. It was definitely a memorable experience. I hiked at Stone Mountain Park, hung out with Charles Barkley, saw Soundgarden in concert and happened to be working a few miles away when the bombing took place in Centennial Park.
That was not a good night, but everything else that month was. Particularly the branding.
Now a lot of critics derided the ‘96 Games for being the most overly commercial Olympics in history. And maybe that was the case. But to me, seeing so many world-class brands up close was fascinating.
Everywhere you looked, the world’s biggest brands were vying for your attention. Coca-Cola. Budweiser. Reebok. Swatch. Sports Illustrated. McDonalds. These brands were all over the place and I thought it was just about the coolest thing in the world.
In fact, when I look back, it was this experience that led me to wanting to work in advertising.
Powerade was one of the brands that Atlanta-based Coca-Cola was pushing hard at the Games. As the official sports drink of the Olympics, Powerade ads were everywhere. In fact, I was so enthralled with the energy drink’s bold, clean advertising that I ended up taking one of their posters home with me (I was a bit of a packrat back then).
At this time, Powerade came in just three flavors – blue, red and yellow. Officially, the blue Powerade was known as Mountain Blast. This was immediately my favorite.
Today, blue Powerade is known as Mountain Berry Blast. I think it’s hilarious that “Berry” needed to be added to the name. It’s as if some faceless committee decided, “What this blue Powerade really needs is a middle name.”
All in all, I think critics of the ‘96 Games are off the mark. The Olympics had an economic impact of more than $5 billion, as two million visitors came to Atlanta for the Games. Plus, the Atlanta Games were the very first to feature a website.
And really, what’s the problem with a little Olympic-sized commercialization? That’s about as American as it gets.
Jeff Bucki is a senior copywriter at Travers Collins.
I was quite surprised to find out that you were at the 1996 Olympics. Although I enjoyed your blog and how you discovered your interest in branding, I really want to hear the story behind your reference to hanging out with Charles Barkley. Did he shield you during the bombing, scalp his tickets to an event or just buy a coke?
My college roommate and I worked for MGR Foods, which handled all the concessions at the Georgia Dome. One of the big execs at MGR had grown up in WNY, so he wanted to bring some Buffalo people down for the Games. That’s how we got there. We actually sold Powerade, hence my fascination. We just met Charles randomly out one night. He is just huge. He looked far more like a football player than a basketball player. Really nice guy. We got his autograph and some photos but on the last night we were there, someone stole our camera. So that photo of us with Sir Charles is gone forever. Hopefully the person who took our camera at least has that photo framed on their wall.
Jeff, your Charles Barkley story blows away my experience meeting Gordon from Sesame Street at the Century Mall.