Tibet protests pressure Olympic sponsors

Until last week, the sponsors' biggest concern was pressure over Darfur.

Fronted by actress Mia Farrow and employing disciplined public relations strategies, Darfur activists have been prodding sponsors to lobby Beijing to help pressure Sudan to end the conflict.

Director Steven Spielberg withdrew as an artistic adviser to the games after pressure from Farrow, chairwoman of Dream for Darfur, which wants companies to lobby Beijing. It has warned China that it risks having its games remembered as the "genocide Olympics" and is issuing "report cards" to rate sponsors on their Darfur policies.

Dream for Darfur issued a "report card" in June on sponsors and plans to issue an update this month.

"The companies that get a C, D or F on this next report card will be the focus of our intensive activism between now and the games," said Jill Savitt, Dream for Darfur's executive director. She said the group will picket their headquarters and appeal to TV viewers to turn off their commercials during the games.

General Electric Co. scored highest at a C-plus in the earlier report, in part for donating medical equipment and aid to UNICEF, while Savitt said 13 companies got failing grades.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal. The latter is a subsidiary of GE.)

"The violence and brutality committed against the people in the Darfur region is appalling," said Deirdre Latour, a GE spokeswoman, in an e-mail. Still, she said, "It is not GE's role to use the games to influence government policy."

In the top tier of sponsors are 12 companies that reportedly have paid at least $100 million each to become Worldwide Olympic Partners.

Lenovo, the only Chinese company among the 12, took into account possible activism when it made its plans, said Robert J. Page, the company's Olympics public relations manager.

"All of these potential considerations are taken into the planning process," Page said. He declined to comment on violent scenarios, but said, "The potential for people to express their opinions is certainly something we have taken into consideration, and we would work with BOCOG on anticipating."

Lenovo hopes to use the Olympics to establish itself as a global brand following its 2005 acquisition of IBM Corp.'s personal computer unit. Asked whether the company worries about damage to its image, Page said, "That's not a concern at this point."

"There is no question that the Olympic Games are a powerful force for peace," Page said. "We believe that the games will focus on all the good that is being brought to China, and we are proud to support that."

Coca-Cola, Adidas AG and Omega, a unit of Switzerland's Swatch Group, say they have talked privately to Beijing Olympics organizers.

They declined to give details, but a BOCOG employee said sponsors have asked for information on China's position on Darfur and other sensitive issues.

"They have held intimate discussions with our sponsorship department to better understand the issues and how it may affect them," said the employee, who asked not to be identified further because she was not authorized to talk to reporters.

"It's obviously a fine balancing act that every single Olympics encounters," said Michael Payne, a former IOC marketing director who now works as a consultant. "The PR departments of each of the sponsors have got to be sensible in how they respond."

Robert A. Kapp, a former president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said it's possible that popular anger, particularly among Americans concerned with human rights, may become so severe "that some companies may face a very hard decision as to whether their highly visible support of the Olympics is causing so much damage that they need to reconsider their options."

"I could imagine some companies going back to their advertising departments and external PR advisers and seeing whether there are ways in which the company's presence in support of the Olympics can be reviewed with an eye toward these recent and tragic circumstances," Kapp said by telephone from Port Townsend, Wash.

"There may be different ways of presenting messages that would still support the Olympics, (but) would not cause undue anger and disenchantment among the people of China or at the level of the Chinese government," he said.

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