OK. A week or so ago I said it was going to be a long road for the Olympic torch from Greece to Beijing. Well the road passes through the United States later this week. And at some point the road is going to lead to corporate sponsors like Coke. Trust me.
So from the standpoint of crisis and reputation management, Coke and others better be thinking about their position on supporting the Olympics as corporate sponsors. The presidential candidates are doing this already as calls for a boycott continue to increase.
This ain’t going to be pretty folks.
Update: Kevin Dugan has an interesting post on this subject this morning on his Strategic Public Relations blog. And for those of you in my ethics class who read that post, check out the first few comments as well.
2 responses so far ↓
jessica // April 8, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I hope you just saw Cafferty’s coverage of this topic! Or the headline of The Onion yesterday: “Olympic Torch Used To Ignite Tibetan Protesters” Good grief. It’s going to be a long summer.
Rob Jewell // April 8, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Well, Cafferty has it right. This is a debacle — and one that gets worse before getting better.
And I bet — the Olympic Committee will either alter the route or end the torch run altogether. Pathetic.
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