The Olympic Games have already kicked off as the war between sponsors
to capture audience attention has begun. Aussie brand experience agency
ABT has established a Beijing office to handle Olympic projects and
just recently staged the massive Street Olympics for Snickers, with
urban street events featuring hybrid sports like Basoccer (a mix of
basketball and soccer), Streetminton (a combination of badminton and
breakdancing), and Jump Satisfaction (participants jumped over as
many Snickers bars as possible to win them). Tickets to the real
Olympic Games were up for grabs as prizes.

With 10,000 visitors, this brand experience event was so huge and
inspiring, that a Beijing Youth TV show staged some of the Games on
their show in subsequent days. This is like an opening marketing salvo
as Olympic sponsors battle for audience supremacy.

ABT Beijing won the contract from Effem Foods/Mars Corporation in China
to develop a creative campaign to raise Snickers awareness and maximise
returns from the Snickers sponsorship status at the Beijing Olympics.

From his offices in Beijing, ABT CEO Peter Grose said: “With this
event, Snickers has kicked off the competitive brand Olympics. By
taking traditional Olympic sports and giving them an urban twist, we’ve
grabbed the attention and participation of tens of thousands of 15-25
Beijing males – the key target group for the Snickers brand.”

Handling the strategy, creative and logistics, ABT staged the 4,000
square metre, brand experience event within a university precinct of
Beijing. The Snickers Street Olympics also featured appearances by
local TV, music and sports stars. They drew a vast media presence with
over 150 representatives from newspaper and television stations in
attendance. All of ABT’s concepts from the street games were also
featured on the popular local youth TV program ‘Beijing Boy’.

Sounds seriously satisfying, Snickers. This seems like some of the only positive PR out there at the moment regarding the Beijing Olympics.