This presents a challenge for the traditional Japanese approach to the world of sport marketing. For decades, sport presented a simple formula for advertising. Cheering athletes was almost a zero-risk strategy for companies to promote their products and brand.
But with the rise of a new generation of activist athletes that includes Osaka, footballer Marcus Rashford and basketball star LeBron James, sponsorship and branding using athletes is becoming more complex, requiring companies to take a stand on wider issues such as racial injustice and gender inequality.
For Panasonic, its contract with Osaka as brand ambassador comes at a time when the 103-year-old group is trying to redefine its areas of growth and transition into a nimbler organisation under a new chief executive. In a diversity drive, it has hired talent from Google and Microsoft, while its general counsel, Laurence Bates, is openly gay in a country where LGBT people often suffer discrimination.
Panasonic's willingness to embrace Osaka's activism is a further sign that it wants to break from its conservative past. But it also faces risks that Nike wrestled with last summer when it encountered internal pushback against a video ad featuring athletes including Colin Kaepernick and Serena Williams. A group of black employees asked the company to publicly acknowledge the company's own internal shortcomings on equality.
Japanese companies will be expected to ensure their own employees have an equitable and inclusive workplace if they are to sell such ideals to consumers. They can no longer talk the talk without addressing the harassment, overwork, dearth of female managers and other problems that continue to plague Japan's workplaces.
As the Olympics enter their final week, the steady stream of medals won by Japanese athletes and increased media focus on actual sport has helped to soften domestic opposition to the holding of the Games during the Covid-19 pandemic. This has made it easier for local sponsors such as Asahi and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation to run related television adverts. Toyota has stuck to its decision not to run Olympics-related ads, but it has also been actively promoting the Games on its own internal website.
The Games, however, continue to be overshadowed by an alarming rise in Covid cases across the nation. And a string of controversies before the start of the Games remain fresh in the memory, including the resignation of the Tokyo 2020 chair over sexist remarks and the sacking of the director for the opening ceremony over a past joke on the Holocaust. The composer for the ceremony also quit over comments about bullying a disabled student in his youth.
The international scrutiny created by the Games may be temporary, but the problems of bullying, racism and sexual harassment remain pervasive across Japanese society. The issues will probably resurface sooner or later.
When they do, silence and distancing — the common approach taken by sponsors during the Olympics — may not be sufficient. Toyota, Panasonic and others did eventually speak out against the sexism remarks made by the former Tokyo 2020 chair. But Tatsuo Sugimoto, a former Olympian and professor of sport economics at Hosei University, said companies needed to do more. "When it's called for, sponsors need to exercise their rights to apply pressure on the sport itself," he said.
So as Tokyo 2020 comes to a close, it should not be a moment of relief for sponsors that the event did not turn into a PR disaster. Instead, it should serve as a reminder that companies must now live up to their proclaimed values for their marketing to be taken seriously.
Written by: Kana Inagaki
© Financial Times
