What Do Volkswagen and Toyota Think About Hyundai’s Olympic Campaign?

Websites and publications that review advertising creative have had a lot to say this week about Hyundai’s new “It’s O.K.” spots, which are currently in steady rotation on U.S. television coverage of the Paris Olympic Games.

The campaign’s message is that it’s okay to give up an activity—like playing a sport—to pursue an alternative that may bring greater joy. The empowering theme has been generally praised for standing out among the usual reliance on sports’ attributes such as determination, perseverance and achievement.

But beyond the storytelling, Hyundai’s new campaign also is compelling from a partnership perspective. In announcing the effort the day before the Games began, Hyundai Motor America’s press release headlined the fact that it was “the presenting sponsor of the USA Women’s Soccer team.”

Subsequent coverage in publications such as USA Today, Ad Age and Marketing Daily has also referred to the automaker as a team sponsor.

The issue is: Hyundai is not a sponsor. Its rival Volkswagen is the presenting sponsor of U.S. Soccer, the governing body that oversees both the men’s and women’s national and Olympic teams. In fact, judging by the partner page of USSoccer.com, Volkswagen is the organization’s largest sponsor.

It appears that Hyundai’s “presenting sponsorship” deal is with broadcaster NBC Universal, where it receives two 30-second halftime ad spots in each USWNT Olympic match. Hyundai also has starting lineup and halftime presenting sponsorship features for each match along with digital preview and recap video branding.

The Olympic Games mark somewhat of a role reversal for Hyundai and VW. The Korean company is a longtime soccer sponsor on the international and national levels, including serving as a global partner of FIFA for the World Cup and other events since 1999. It also just signed in May as official automotive partner of Mexico’s professional Liga MX in the U.S., through an agreement brokered by broadcaster TelevisaUnivision, which owns Liga MX stateside commercial rights.

Volkswagen of America renewed its presenting partnership with U.S. Soccer—first signed in January 2019—in November 2022. It activated the USWNT at the Hyundai-sponsored FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 through a #WeBelieve digital campaign that allowed fans to submit personalized messages of encouragement to the team’s players competing in the tournament.

Apart from the battle between the brands for the soccer audience, Hyundai’s Paris 2024 approach is interesting in that unlike other Olympic tie-ins, it mirrors a pro sports sponsorship strategy by tying the brand to a single team and focusing on the broadcasts of that team’s matches.

It’s easy to envision other brands aligned with Olympic team sports such as basketball and hockey taking a similar approach for future Games.

Finally, even though it has millions of dollars already committed to FIFA and other sponsorships around the world, the first-ever Olympic campaign by Hyundai could also be seen as a small-scale test to determine if the company might make a play for worldwide Olympic partnership rights in the auto category if Toyota, as reported, does not renew its role with the IOC.

For what it’s worth, Hyundai Motor America CMO Angela Zepeda hinted that Toyota gave up some of its rights to lock up Games ad inventory in an interview with MediaPost’s Marketing Daily. “This is new, and that’s because there was a change in the way that Toyota has owned the rings for Olympics,” she said. “Their partnership is changing a little bit, and this allowed another automotive [brand] and probably others the opportunity to come in.”