Olympic Sponsors Won’t Be Getting Any Medals For Their Response To Russia’s LGBT Oppression

But before we explore them, let’s consider the flak some these companies have received in just the last week:

VISA is the subject of a petition drive urging its customers to cancel their cards.

Olympic sponsors Coca Cola and McDonalds saw their promotional efforts get the culture-jamming treatment by activists. Coke had to shut down a promo that allowed users to print out personalized messages onto Coke virtual cans to be shared on social media after activists discovered that it would accept words like “straight” and “hetero,” but not “gay” or “homo” (which triggered a response more appropriate to profanity: “Oops, let’s pretend you didn’t just try that”).

#CheersToSochi was innocently launched by McDonalds, but when I visited its page on Twitter, no one was talking about french fries. And lest one be tempted to conclude this is a niche issue, the tweets include one from a communications professor in Iowa: “Wow Crisis Comm Class what do you think of this?” Your brand is most definitely losing ground when its free fall is assigned voyeurism for university students. [1]

Now about those company responses to the investors’ letter.

General Electric’s letter assured investors that it had had “ongoing and substantive conversations with the IOC on a wide variety of topics,” including the ones outlined in our letter, and that such conversations would continue. If this was meant to reassure, it did the opposite. In agenda that includes a wide variety of topics, where did LGBT human rights rank relative to, say, the placement of GE’s logo, or the number of snowboarding tickets company reps were slated to receive?

Unfortunately, it goes downhill from there.

“We do not believe that it is our role as an Olympic sponsor to influence the policies of sovereign governments. Social and political issues among nations should be resolved by governments and their people through that nation’s political process.”

GE doesn’t lobby foreign governments? Sorry, that just doesn’t pass the giggle test, given the $16 million on lobbying it spent in 2013 – and that was just in the US.

GE then reminds us that it has great LGBT workplace policies.

Elements of GE’s response form a template for the others.  Coca Cola wrote back that it has been a long time supporter of the LGBT community, has a globally applicable nondiscrimination policy, and has also raised the issue with the IOC. No comment, however, on whether Coke’s Olympics team has broached the subject directly with Russian leaders. (Or why its web site’s algorithms were programmed to regard “gay” as a dirty word.)

McDonalds was brief and to-the-point, also pointing to discussions with the IOC and the Sochi Organizing Committee. “We believe these are the most effective steps we can take.” Really, McDonalds? #YouCanDoBetterThanThat.

Dow, too, touted its LGBT workplaces policies (which do happen to be top of the line). Its “vice president for Olympic operations” noted that as far back as July, he personally “expressed our concerns about the anti-gay propaganda law to the IOC as well as with the Sochi Organizing Committee, as have numerous other Dow employees as they join planning calls for the upcoming Olympics.”

Like the others, Visa noted its own great policies, punted the ball to the IOC, and tried to console us with the news that Russian government said it would “comply strictly” with the Olympic charter.  “We do not believe it is our place to call directly on the leaders of the Russian Federation to rescind domestic legislation and declare their commitment to equality,” the letter continues, adding that governments and the United Nations are most suited to this kind of thing. Like GE, this must mean that Visa’s not big on lobbying (although it spent over $5 million in lobbying in the US alone in 2013). Hm.

And last, but definitely not least, was Swatch’s take on the matter. In a letter that must have made Swatch’s PR department shudder,  CEO Nick Hayek observed that although “Politics [sic] always tried to use Olympics for their causes claiming always good reasons,” but Omega has never abandoned its Olympic sponsorships. “Omega remained doing its duty.” Then he switches the subject.

However, as you claim [emphasis added] you are an investor with Swatch Group you should be equally preoccupied about what has been publicized lately: the massif [sic] collection of date [sic] of the NSA worldwide including Switzerland…As an investor you should have all interest [sic] to speak up loud [sic] about such potentially practices from the USA.

(In fact, several of the investor signatories have been doing just that.)

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the no-shows to the two-way correspondence party were Atos, Samung, Panasonic and Procter & Gamble.

Good for these companies for aspiring to treat their their LGBT employees well. But they don’t do themselves any favors hiding behind flimsy statements with holes large enough to contain a ski run. This problem  will inevitably recur whenever the games are held in countries with glaringly awful human rights records, and the sponsors need to take to heart the fact that they can no longer outrun activists in the age of social media. Until the Olympics are held on a floating platform in international waters, the IOC and its corporate underwriters will face a biennial choice: either be far more respectful and sensitive in choosing host countries, or speak truth to power. And why not? They’re paying for the party, after all.

Clean Yield does not actively invest in any of the companies mentioned above and does not intend to invest in them in the near term.  The companies may be owned in certain client accounts as historical holdings where they cannot be sold for tax and other account-related reasons.