Sao Paulo 2016 – the digital Olympics
Expect to see a massive online presence from Olympic sponsors in Brazil 2016.
Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city with over 11 million inhabitants, banned outdoor advertising in 2006 with the so-called ‘Clean City Law’. Over 15’000 billboards were taken down, much to the detriment of the advertising industry. Critics of the law feared massive revenue and job losses from the ban, however the city has thrived without the mask of advertising and the ban is widely considered a success.
Obviously, this ban affects what Olympic sponsors can do in Sao Paulo. Brazil will be in an Olympic frenzy, and with outdoor advertising banned it means foregoing significant advertising opportunities. Also, with so many guerilla advertisers looking to associate themselves with the Olympics, on-site advertising is one of the principal methods to defend against these attacks for official sponsors.
The answer may well lie in the digital realm. With the physical presence of brands forbidden in such a key location in Brazil, brands will need to associate their presence with the Olympics in other ways. The London Olympic Games was the first to really embrace the concept of social media and online advertising, so expect this growing trend to only continue. At the end of the day literally millions (if not billions) of people will be talking about the Olympics, and the easiest conversations for brands to join exist in the online forum. How they do this creatively and perhaps more importantly, uniquely, remains to be seen.
Of course, the outdoor advertising ban only applies in one city of 11 million people, and when you consider this against the global audience for a worldwide event such as the Olympic Games it is a quite insignificant number.
It does, however, suggest that perhaps consumers have more power to control what they are exposed to than they realise. The law was passed after extensive lobbying by citizens (and with the help of an enigmatic mayor), who simply voted that they did not want to see advertising in their city anymore.
This is your classic ‘power of the people’ scenario. And it raises the issue – social media’s value is directly linked to the number of people that use and contribute to it. Is it too big a leap then to presume that if there was a mass exodus on social media platforms such as Facebook in protest against the rising levels of advertising, then the value would diminish and advertising would be reduced to encourage growth again? It might be idealistic, but is it possible?
Don’t let the social media wolves fool you, it’s the sheep that have the real power in this situation….
michaelsodomaco 
A really interesting point – do you think that if people rebel against advertising (unlikely, but theoretically) they would just delete Facebook/Twitter, or would it be more likely that a new platform appears? I think someone else would just create a new social network, and just sort of start the whole cycle again.
Great point Anthony! I think you absolutely right, the potential to earn so big will simply mean that someone else rocks up to the party and Facebook becomes the next Myspace. Do you think Facebook has to be careful with how they’re currently travelling? I mean, I’m not that interested in it anymore to be honest…
Yeah I really do, Michael. I mean, I personally only use Facebook because my friends and family use it. I don’t love it, but it’s pretty good for organising stuff. It would just be too much of an inconvenience to switch platforms because it would mean all my friends and family would have to switch as well to make it worth it.
Fair call, I’m much the same. I guess there would need to be that critical mass of people to ever actually cause a switch. So I suppose Facebook could see that happening from a long way off and easily adapt it’s revenue model to suit the situation