Olympic Games 2008 and CSR disaster for sponsors.

China

The Olympic Games are quickly turning into every company’s worst nightmare. Associating your brand with violations of human rights and media freedom alongside CSR is hypocrisy at highest quarters. Beijing clearly looks like a bad place for the Olympic Games to be held.

The Olympics would have been a great opportunity for China to showcase itself as a modern country to the world. The amount of money and effort that has gone into this is tremendous. Even the regular citizens have gone into a frenzy in learning English and scrubbing up their cities. But instead the focus is on the very backward attitude which has been hindering China’s growth all the while. It was shortsighted on the government’s part to have expected that everybody would have neglected all the dirty laundry and seen only the good side of China.

In today’s world more and more people are becoming concerned about social responsibility. With the internet facilitating the easy propagation of information and truth, its hard to hide anything. Only two days back Twitter facilitated rescue of an American, who was arrested without cause. An online petition for Tibet had 10 million people supporting it in just four days. Such events are uncommon, but not surprising. They are logical outcomes of essential technologies.

China’s Olympics are being held ransom and rightly so. Its high time Tibet was democratized and its now or never. The associated companies should do their bit and turn up the heat on the government. Since they are paying for the Games they have every right to question the government’s tactics and urger for positive steps. If the sponsors do not take steps to correct their image, this is quickly going to blow up in their faces. If the Olympic Games need to be saved, then the Chinese govt should agree to reason and stop its repressive policies against Tibet.

Companies like McDonald’s and GE which are among the top 12 sponsors, have some of the most admired CSR policies need to take the initiative. You cannot expect to make money and add to your brand off the miseries of million other people in this century.