No Olympics vibe, but firms devotedly back athletes

Samsung, Hyundai and SK shine in supporting Team Korea

Samsung, Hyundai Motor, SK and other conglomerates here are drawing applause for their devoted support of the South Korean national team taking part in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, as their financial and technical assistance has greatly helped Team Korea’s athletes show off their skills and win medals.

Marketing-wise, the Olympic Games has traditionally been a great opportunity for companies to promote their technology and products. However, things have been slightly different at the Tokyo Games.

Conglomerates have been relying on rather passive promotional marketing due to negative perceptions over Japan’s drive to host the pandemic-delayed Olympics, as well as deteriorated bilateral relations, amid the ongoing history and trade disputes between Korea and Japan.

Samsung Electronics, which had previously always announced its Olympic marketing plans, quietly began its promotional activities for the Games without any official statement. Samsung, the only Korean brand among the 15 global Olympic sponsors, provided 17,000 of its Galaxy S21 5G Tokyo Olympics Edition smartphones to all the athletes competing in the Olympics and Paralympics.

Also, the tech giant has been promoting its brand and products through “Team Galaxy,” which is composed of 11 of the world’s most renowned athletes, including South Korean volleyball star Kim Yeonkoung. Kim especially has been in the spotlight for wearing what is presumed to be the company’s upcoming smartwatch. Industry analysts estimated that the smart gadget could be the Galaxy Watch 4, set to be unveiled at an Unpacked event, to be held Aug. 11. Samsung is also slated to unveil new foldable phones that day.

For Olympic fans and media outlets who were unable to join the Games due to the pandemic, the company is running a virtual Samsung Galaxy House. Also, Samsung has set up a lounge at the athletes’ village, enabling athletes to try out its gadgets.

Samsung has been sponsoring the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for over three decades, since the conglomerate started as a local sponsor for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Since the 1998 Winter Olympics, Samsung has been one of the Games top sponsors.

Hyundai Motor Group has also earned attention for its ardent support of the country’s archery. The automotive giant has been sponsoring archery here since 1985. Thanks to Hyundai Motor’s financial and technical assistance, South Korean national team members have won four gold medals at the Tokyo Games.

A group representative said that the relationship between Hyundai Motor and archery began with Honorary Chairman Chung Mongkoo, and his son, Chairman Chung Euisun, has also enthusiastically supported the development of the national archery team.

“Chairman Chung visited the Olympic archery venue in 2019 to support the national team. During his visit, he also checked the conditions of the archery field and the athletes’ village there,” the official said. “After returning to Korea, the chairman ordered the construction of a facility similar to the archery field in Tokyo and held a mock competition at Jincheon National Training Center.”

For athletes taking part in this year’s Olympics, Hyundai Motor Group provided training equipment including high-precision shooting machines, a vision-based heart rate measuring machine and an artificial intelligence (AI) technology-based system that analyzed archers’ habits and weaknesses in prerformance.

Upon arriving from Tokyo, Chairman Chung told reporters at Gimpo International Airport in western Seoul that “a high-precision shooting machine, which allows archers to choose the correct arrows played an important role at the Olympics.”

Given the fact that the group paid a total of 2.5 billion won ($2.17 million) in bonuses to all the national archery team members and coaches who won archery events at the 2016 Olympics, a huge reward is expected to be given to them after the Tokyo Games as well.

SK Group also has been in the spotlight for supporting fencing and handball, which have thus far been rather unpopular sporting events in Korea.

“Chairman Chey Tae-won has contributed to the development of the country’s handball by fostering young adults, creating men’s and women’s teams, and investing more than 100 billion won in the sport,” a group representative said. The representative added that the group has prepared large bonuses to motivate the women’s handball team, which aims to win a medal at the Tokyo Games.

SK Telecom has played a pivotal role in the development of fencing in Korea, continuously investing in the sword-fighting art. In particular, the company has set up a support team comprised of physical trainers, medical staff and video analysts. Thanks in part to SK Telecom’s dedicated support, the Korean national fencing team won five medals at the Tokyo Games.

Though the organizing committee of the Games has set a broad principle that sport is neutral and must be separated from political, religious or racial propaganda, companies will likely have difficulties in setting their marketing strategies for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, due to the deepening diplomatic row between the United States and China.

On July 27, lawmakers in the U.S. chastised five of the country’s firms — Intel, Procter & Gamble, Airbnb, Visa and Coca-Cola — that are sponsoring the Beijing Winter Games, slated to be held in the Chinese

capital from Feb. 4 next year, in a congressional hearing looking into alleged genocide in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

According to an AFP report, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who led the hearing as chairman of the congressional-executive commission on China, accused these firms of enabling China to reap rewards in “prestige and propaganda,” drawing a parallel to the 1936 Berlin Games, which was held under German dictator Adolf Hitler.

“He was already engaged in horrific acts against his own citizens and worse was to come. But in this situation, it’s worse than Berlin in 1936 because the genocide is already underway,” the senator said.

The U.S. has claimed that China has conducted genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim people in the region, saying that expert groups estimate that more than 1 million people are incarcerated in concentration camps. In response, Beijing has denied the allegation and has described the camps as vocational training centers.

When asked if China was “committing genocide against the Uyghur people,” only Steven Rodgers, executive vice president of Intel, directly answered, saying, “We don’t do business in Xinjiang.”

“That was true before the State Department issued its report. I’ve read the State Department’s report, I’ve studied it and I believe its conclusions,” Rodgers said. But other executives avoided answering, saying that they needed to comply with Chinese law or that they had no role in the IOC’s choice of Beijing as the host of the 2022 Games.

An industry representative here presumed that “as the war of nerves between the two countries is getting fiercer ahead of the Games in China, chances are that Korean companies will be more passive than at previous events when performing marketing activities related to the Olympics.”