Wireless should go for gold during Olympics

Once again, the Olympics will be seen as a kind of barometer for mobile data. But for wireless to perform alchemy at this year’s games by turning consumers into gold, carriers and their business partners will need to put some marketing muscle behind the platform.
The Summer Games open in Beijing next week, ushering digital entertainment onto the biggest stage the stuff has ever seen. The event “will be a game-changer for all digital platforms,” according to NBC Universal President George Kliavkoff, whose company plans to haul in a cool billion in advertising dough during the spectacle. “I think it’s going to be the single largest digital media event ever.” JupiterResearch echoed those sentiments – with a more cautious view – calling the games “a true test of cross-channel media programming and marketing.”
Indeed, the Olympics seem a natural fit for a cross-platform play, given the breadth and depth of the event as well as its global appeal. NBC plans to deliver a ridiculous 2,200 hours of streaming Olympic video on its Web site, apparently allowing the world’s biggest sports geeks to tune into the early walk-racing trials and one-handed mini-golf competitions. (I think only one of those is actually an Olympic sport. I’m not sure which it is, however.)
And mobile is well-positioned to benefit. Not only will a host of startups and smaller players deliver content to wireless handsets, NBC is pushing several mobile offerings from its Olympics site and Yahoo has made mobile a key component of its online content from Beijing. Mobile-savvy Americans likely will take note and use their phones to receive updates, check out video and make sure their country is ahead in the medal count.
For this Olympics to really move the needle in wireless data in North America, though, the industry will need more than just a “mobile” tab atop a few landing pages. NBC and its deep-pocketed media brethren will have to actively push the medium, telling subscribers what they can access on their phones – and why they should try it.
But more important – or, I guess, potentially important – will be the extent to which non-wireless companies push the medium. I’m guessing we’ll see the presence of footwear companies such as Adidas, Nike and Reebok, all of which have embraced mobile as a way to reach customers, and it’s possible the carriers themselves may use the games to promote lucrative data services instead of short-sightedly crowing about their voice services. Even more impressive would be stepped-up efforts from, say, banks, credit-card companies, automakers and anyone else that targets those who probably don’t have a MySpace page.
It’s that kind of middle-America presence that was so disappointingly lacking during the Super Bowl earlier this year. But those kinds of efforts will help shove mobile data beyond early adopters and into the mass market. And there may be no better window than the one that opens a week from Friday.