Dow: A Much Needed Green Bright Spot at Rio 2016 Olympics

GreenSportsBlog By Lew Blaustein

Green Sports Blog recently spoke with Julio Natalense, Latin America’s Technology and Sustainability Leader for Dow at Rio 2016, to get the lowdown on what Dow’s sustainability/carbon involvement with Rio 2016, gain an understanding of the rationale behind Dow’s overall Olympic-sustainability strategy, and find out what kind of environmental and social legacy the company will leave after the Olympic Flame is doused on August 21.Dow is the type of sponsor the organizers of mega-event like the Olympics, World Cup or Super Bowl crave. Why? Because after Dow pays the hefty sponsorship fees, in this case to both the International Olympic Committee and the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee, they don’t simply slap a logo on a print ad or run a series of 30 second ads. Nope. They go aggressively into activation mode, investing additional resources on the ground to put their technology to use in the service of making the Olympics host city and country cleaner and greener.Julio Natalense, Technology Director and Sustainability Leader for Dow at Rio 2016 said the company’s global Olympics sponsorship and its activations in support of that sponsorship “makes strategic sense” on a number of levels:

• Being an Olympics sponsor provides Dow with both a high profile Business-to-Business (B-to-B) platform in the host city and country, one it would not likely have otherwise. “Wait,” you say, “the Olympics are a Business-to-Consumer (B-to-C) sponsorship!” True but don’t underestimate its B-to-B power.
• Dow had been involved with sports since the 1980s, providing stadia and arenas with state-of-the-art insulation, temperature control systems and more. So the environment, pun intended, is a strong fit.
• That fit makes it easy to connect the Dow brand and values with those of the Olympics which energizes employees, helps to retain existing customers and opens the door to new business relationships. In fact, the company expects, per Natalense, to reap “$1 billion in new business over the ten years of the global sponsorship.”

...Dow is bringing its Rio-sustainability story to thought-leader audiences outside of Brazil. Promoting the program was an important element of the company’s participation at the recent Green Sports Alliance Summit as well as at last December’s Sustainable Innovation in Sport Conference in Paris, which was part of the COP 21 climate conference. And one can visit https://dow.com/carbonmitigation for more information. .Register for the 2017 Green Sports Alliance Summit here!