Six corporate sponsors discussed their marketing goals and achievements for the Beijing Olympics during a panel titled “Beijing and beyond: An assessment from the corporate stakeholders.”

Peter Foss, president of Olympic sponsorship and corporate sales for GE, talked about the desire, even by companies, to leave a legacy, like the “Imagination Center” that the company built in Beijing, saying, “We’re all concerned about leaving things behind that you can be proud you spent your money on.”

This feeling was echoed by Dave Mingy, director of Olympic marketing for Johnson & Johnson, who said his company, unlike GE, didn’t know whether the building it put up for the for the Olympics would be kept up by the Chinese. “It’s very difficult to have built such wonderful structures and potentially to have to raze them to the ground in a period of three months,” he said. For the most part, the panelists agreed that Beijing was a positive experience that continues to prove to be a sound investment.

Quick hits:

Scott McCune, Coca-Cola’s vice president of integrated marketing, on the company’s accomplishments in China: “Seven years ago, Coca-Cola was not the No. 1 soft drink in China. One of our legacies was to create a relationship with consumers and utilizing the Olympic Games to teach them how to drink an ice-cold Coca-Cola, and we feel that, over the last few years, we’ve literally touched and had an experience with 500 million Chinese consumers, literally with an Olympic experience while they’re drinking Coca-Cola.”

Mike Cunningham, head of worldwide sponsorship marketing for Lenovo, on the company’s goals for the Olympics: “Our initial goal prior to the Olympics … was global brand awareness, and we did that — we achieved our goals. And now we want to move to more of a regional or local level as far as activation, because in order to continue on the awareness level and continue to grow we have to really connect at the local level.” (Note: Lenovo will not be a sponsor at the next Olympic Games.)

John Lewicki, senior director of alliance marketing for McDonald’s: “The fact that the food was god-awful over there helped us tremendously.”

Lewicki, on McDonald’s setting up its first drive-through restaurant in China:
“We actually had to have people stand outside and tell people that they needed to drive through the drive-through to get their food, but what we didn’t realize is that once they got their food they would then park and go inside and eat it.”

Terry Shorrock, director of shows and events for Panasonic, on protecting sponsor exclusivity at the Olympics: “I think the IOC has to be much more conscious of ‘ambush marketing.’ Especially in our case, there’s examples of other high-definition companies invading our space without having correct action taken, and I think maybe they need to step in more and make the rules a little bit clearer for those types of ambushes of other sponsors.”