Ed Beadle admits that the marketing team at American Honda Motor Co. Inc. is competitive.
So when the VP of digital services and marketing and his team found out that the organizers of the LA28 Olympics and Paralympics were making venue naming rights available for the first time in Olympic history, they were motivated to make sure that the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, retained its name for the Games.
“The idea of somebody else owning it and then having to cover up our signage, that was one of those things,” Beadle told Marketing Brew. “We were like, ‘Ah, I don’t like that.’”
Honda eventually locked in the naming rights, and earlier this month, Honda Center was announced as one of the first named venues for the event. While the naming rights aren’t the entire reason Honda became a sponsor of LA28 (its official sponsorship was announced prior to the Honda Center news), they were a significant part of the conversation, Beadle said.
“I wouldn’t call it the cake, but it’s icing,” he said. “The fact they let us do it—it’s incredible.”
We spoke to Beadle about Honda’s broader approach to the Games, from its plans for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics next year through a Team USA partnership to the brand’s intentions to show up in LA during the 2028 Games beyond the Honda Center.
Do the math
Even though Beadle said in a LinkedIn post that he originally thought an Olympic sponsorship was “something of a long shot,” he told us that he felt it was his job to consider it seriously, anyway.
“I’m always thinking about the math, and when it comes to the expense of something of this scale, it’s big,” he said. “It’s not like I’m pitching a new ad campaign.”
As conversations progressed, it became increasingly clear that the sponsorship opportunity could make sense. Honda’s US operations were originally established in LA, and its headquarters are still in Southern California, making the location alone significant for the brand. The company’s slogan is also “The Power of Dreams,” and “there’s no better sport[ing event], period, that showcases individuals’ dreams” than the Olympics, he said.
Like Beadle, Honda’s CFO wanted “to see the math” before signing off on such a big deal, but Beadle said it wasn’t a hard sell.
“The Olympics is such an amazing heartstring puller,” he said. “Sometimes in marketing, you really have to explain, especially in this day and age, ‘What is this property? What does it do?’ But with the Olympics, everyone got it immediately.”
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As a founding partner of the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the official automotive partner of Team USA, Honda will provide a fleet of accessible vehicles and other mobility products to the Games, and it will integrate into NBCUniversal’s coverage. Many of the other specifics of the activation are still in the works, according to Beadle, but the KPIs are already becoming clear.
Through the Olympics, Beadle said his team is looking to build on existing brand trust by “increasing the emotional appeal of Honda,” measuring emotional connections to the brand now, and then again after the LA Games. Individual Honda-owned brands like Acura have their own “sub-goals,” he said. His team is also already measuring stats like impressions and sentiment tied to the sponsorship.
Gone sledding
American Honda is getting into the Olympic spirit well ahead of LA28, serving as the official premier technology and automotive partner of the USA Bobsled/Skeleton team for Milano Cortina and beyond.
Honda engineers are already working with the team on “engineering data, analysis, and [equipment] design,” and as part of the deal, the Acura logo will appear “on their sleds in both national and international competitions,” according to the company. Certain gear like enhanced helmets will be ready for use in time for the 2026 Games, but a fully redesigned vehicle likely won’t be ready until 2030, Beadle said. The rest of Honda’s marketing for Milano Cortina is focused on media buys rather than on-the-ground activations, he told us.
Come 2028, though, Honda brands will be involved in other Olympic sports, including volleyball. Honda Center will house Olympic volleyball, which Beadle chalked up to “luck of the draw,” since the sport is played for the full two-week duration of the Games and has been gaining popularity among US audiences.
In addition to IRL marketing around LA28, Beadle said he’s “staffing up” on the social side to prepare to react quickly to viral moments that happen around the Olympics. Now more than ever, the Games have a reputation for creating somewhat unexpected stars (like Team USA athletes Ilona Maher and Stephen Nedoroscik, both of whom found Paris Olympic fame on social), and Beadle is hoping for the opportunity to form partnerships that feel natural if certain Olympic athletes who align with the Honda brand find themselves in the spotlight.
“Our key filter is authenticity, and not being reactionary,” he said, later adding that “it is gold” when celebrities like athletes are already fans of the brand.
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