Can the 2008 Summer Olympics Break the Summer Slump?

The 2008 Summer Olympics are scheduled to begin in Beijing, China on August 8th.  Many companies and brands are investing large sums of money in advertising, promotion and sponsorship initiatives related to the Olympic Games.  Will their efforts give their brands a boost this summer?  NBC certainly hopes so.

In fact, NBC plans to carefully analyze consumers’ viewing habits during the 2008 Olympic Games to get a better picture of how those consumers are using and interacting with media, including on television and on the Internet.

The research will actually be very interesting in that much of it will be conducted real-time, meaning programming changes could be synchronized with changing viewer preferences.  It’s about time this type of research became a priority.

The question remains, however, how will viewer ratings be for the 2008 Olympics?  There is certainly nothing else on television these days, unless you want to watch yet another reality show that is exactly the same as the 10 before it.  Perhaps the 2008 Summer Olympic Games will attract a large audience.  What do you think?  Are the Olympics a great solution to the summer slump?

Read more about branding the Olympics in this Brandcurve post: The Olympics – Branding on a Global Stage.

Image: Flickr