All eyes are on Vancouver this month, and you can bet that eyewear manufacturers are banking on some of those eyes landing on the goggles and sunglasses the athletes wear.
Click here for a list of Canadian medal winners and their eyewear!
Athlete sponsorships are an important part of the marketing strategy for any sportswear company. While companies like Nike, adidas and Oakley aren’t Olympic sponsors, they do sponsor the same athletes outside the games, providing funds and equipment that elite-level athletes need in order to train for and compete in World Cup and other top events. Athletes have a reputation for being a bit superstitious, and they certainly don’t risk a potentially career-making performance by changing equipment at the last minute. So it’s a fair bet that the athletes who normally wear a particular brand of sunglasses or goggles while competing will be wearing them at the Olympics.
The Vancouver games will mean a lot of eyes on their products. The 2006 games in Torino were broadcast in 200 countries, and resulted in 10.6 billion viewer hours. If you’ve got a sporty clientele, it might be a good time to stock up on what the athletes will be wearing, because the odds are good that somebody will come in asking for them.
Oakley
On the athletes’ faces, the most visible company will likely be Oakley. The sports eyewear juggernaut is a regular sponsor for more than 300 athletes who will be competing at the Olympics.
“We’re involved from A to Z, supporting them and sponsoring them,” says Alex Langevin, Oakley’s marketing director. The company begins recruiting athletes when they’re young, largely by providing product. As they develop their skill and stature in their sport, the company may begin providing more funding and support. By the time you hit elite-level athletes, the company is providing funding and professional guidance, he says.
Because of sheer volume, the odds are that most of the Canadian athletes you see on the podium will be wearing Oakleys.
The athletes they sponsor outside the games include some serious medal hopefuls, such as mogul skier Jennifer Heil. The big ‘O’ logo was clearly visible on her goggles as she crossed the finish line to win gold in Turin. They’ve also got Alexandre Bilodeau, the 2009 World Cup freestyle champion, who will be looking to beat his 11th place finish in Turin. Ashleigh McIvor, the reigning world champion in ski cross, will also be in her Oakleys at the Olympics, as will many of the freestyle, ski cross and speed skating athletes.
When looking for athletes to sponsor, companies look for more than just someone who will perform. They look for athletes who will speak well of the product, says Langevin, and especially ones who will influence people beyond their sport—people like cyclist Lance Armstrong.
An ideal athlete for sponsorship will speak articulately about the product and why they choose to wear it. For example, Jenn Heil has said: “In the sport of mogul skiing I need to be able to read the terrain at four moguls per second. Often our races are held in difficult conditions such as the rain, clouds, high sun, or even night. I know I can always rely on my Oakley goggles and a wide array of lens choices for the event.”
Nike
“It’s best to link up with them, not to pay them to wear it,” says Steve Tripi, Nike Vision brand manager for Marchon. An athlete who wears the product because it works for them will make for a better spokesperson than someone who wears it for the sponsorship dollars.
That’s important, because athletes influence purchasing decisions in two ways. Obviously, the visibility of an elite athlete winning Olympic or World Cup gold in a pair of sunglasses will make people think “if it’s good enough for him, it must be good enough for me,” Tripi says. But people also ask them for equipment advice.
Eyewear manufacturers do not generally track sales lift closely enough to say precisely how one athlete’s performance affects lift. To a large extent, athlete sponsorship is about building a brand’s reputation within the sport and through visibility to the broader community. But a major event does affect sales.
Many New York Yankees baseball players wore Nike sunglasses last year, and after the team won the World Series, “phones were ringing for three days, asking what Alex Rodriguez was wearing, or what A-Rod was wearing,”he says. “People actually go into stores asking for that style.”
Like Oakley, Nike is not an official Olympic sponsor. But many of their athletes are competing, including cross-country skiers Kristina Groves and Denny Morrison. Groves has two silver medals from the 2006 Olympics and is leading the World Cup pack in the 1500 m standings this year. Morrison is another silver medalist from Turin, and set a world record in the 1500 m event last year (which has since been broken). Both are serious medal contenders. Nike will have a hospitality tent at the games, and some 330 athletes will be given a pair of Veer sunglasses. These are performance sport sunglasses with an 8-base wrap, interchangeable polarized lenses and a ventilated, rubberized nosepiece.
Athletes like highly wrapped frames with pristine optics, says Tripi. Interchangeable lenses are important to them, as light and weather conditions are variable. Lens technology is another important factor, he adds, and athletes look for sunglasses that can have lenses with polarization, photochromics and contrast-enhancing properties.
adidas
The economy is affecting sponsorship plans this year. Most companies have scaled back their activities and are funding fewer athletes.
“We wanted to focus on the Olympic athletes,” says Cynthia Woo, marketing coordinator for Canadian Optical Supply, which distributes adidas eyewear in Canada. Adidas doesn’t have a large roster of athletes it regularly sponsors competing, despite this commitment. That’s largely because the company focuses on golf. That said, they do have some powerful athletes, including Chandra Crawford, who captured gold in the sprint event at the 2006 games.
Most of the adidas athletes wear sunglasses rather than goggles. All of the athletes have TerrexPro sunglasses, which feature a twin filter to keep moisture away from the eyes in even extreme conditions, plus the detachable nose guard for protection. It’s the next generation of the elevation ClimaCool. The evil eye, now ten years old, remains a popular competition sunglass, as do the a172-a175, which mix ClimaCool lenses with temples from the supernova sunglasses.
Bolle
Like adidas, Bolle focuses on summer sports, such as beach volleyball, and so has one confirmed athlete competing. Luckily it’s aerialist Steve Omischl. He’s had a bad season and performed poorly in Olympics past, but he’s also a three-time world champion and one of the most articulate athletes ever to discuss his eyewear.
He credits an eye training regiment and contrast-enhancing lenses as two important changes that helped him move from being a promising young jumper at the beginning of the millennium to a world champion a year later. He normally wears Parole or Vigilante sunglasses, but has also used Shift and Swift Kick.
Budget constraints aren’t the only thing hurting some manufacturers’ athlete rosters. Injury is also knocking out a lot of athletes, including the Canadian Alpine Ski Team, whose members seem to be dropping like flies this season. That’s bad news for Uvex, who are the goggle sponsors for most of the team.
Sundog
Because most companies are not official Olympic sponsors, they won’t be advertising using the athletes’ names or images during the games. Many produced billboards and POP in the months leading up to the games, particularly for use in the Lower Mainland and in sports stores. Anyone doing marketing or PR that even remotely smacks of Olympic ties does so at their own risk. The Olympic games are one of the most tightly controlled and policed events in the world. But not everyone is counting on athletes to buoy them during the games. One Canadian company is an official Olympic licensee: Sundog Distributing. The 26-year-old company is not a big name on the international sunglass stage, and so this deal could do a lot for its international reputation.
“We’re based in Calgary. We saw first-hand here the potential of the Olympics as a very popular winter sports event,” says Gary Makar, head of marketing and advertising for Sundog.
As the official non-prescription sunglasses licensee, Sundog is producing Vancouver 2010 sunglasses. So it won’t do a lot to build their brand with the general public, but it’s already going a long way building the brand with potential customers. Makar says that Wal-Mart has already requested five exclusive Olympic sunglass models for their stores.
“It gives you some well-earned credibility,” he says. In all, the Vancouver 2010 sunglass collection from Sundog includes 24 styles, including both sport and sport fashion models. They have polycarbonate frames, offer full UVA and UVB protection and have suggested retail prices under $35.