Olympic PR: Weber Shandwick, Hill & Knowlton, Edelman and the Agencies Behind the Games

By EPR Editorial Team

Edited on Jun 28, 2026.

Related: Weber Shandwick Profile · PR Firms Directory.

The Olympic Games are one of the most consequential PR mandates a global agency can hold. The work is not just sponsor-facing — it is geopolitical, athlete-facing, IOC-facing, host-nation-facing, and broadcaster-facing all at once. The agencies that have held Olympic mandates have used them as both prestige assets and revenue anchors for years afterward.

Weber Shandwick — formed in 2001 through the merger of Weber Group and Shandwick International, the flagship PR network inside Interpublic Group — has been one of the most consistent communications partners across modern Olympic Games. The firm's Olympic work, alongside the broader history of PR agencies on Olympic mandates, is the long view below.

Olympic PR History — Which Firms, Which Games

A non-exhaustive history of the major Olympic communications mandates of the modern era:

• Atlanta 1996 — Cohn & Wolfe handled the host committee. The Games are remembered for the Centennial Park bombing, the early-internet broadcasting debut, and the bid-bribery scandal that emerged years later.
• Sydney 2000 — Weber Shandwick (or its predecessor entity Shandwick International) had a substantial role on the host-country side, and the Games are widely considered one of the best-executed Summer Olympics of the modern era. The Cathy Freeman cauldron lighting is among the most-referenced Olympic communications moments.
• Salt Lake City 2002 — The bid-bribery scandal that broke in 1998 ahead of these Winter Games triggered a complete restructure of IOC bidding processes, and the communications operation around the Games was substantially about reputation repair for the IOC itself.
• Athens 2004 — A Games that ran late and over budget but produced one of the most culturally resonant opening ceremonies in modern history.
• Beijing 2008 — Hill & Knowlton was deeply involved in the international communications operation for the Beijing organizing committee. The mandate was controversial — human rights organizations criticized the agency throughout the Games — and remains one of the most-cited examples of PR-firm-and-authoritarian-host engagement.
• London 2012 — Edelman had a substantial role on the global sponsor side, particularly for Procter & Gamble's "Thank You, Mom" campaign that became the canonical Olympic-sponsor PR program of the era.

The Olympic Sponsor PR Operation

Separate from the host-committee work is the Olympic-sponsor PR operation. The TOP (The Olympic Partner) program is the IOC's top-tier global sponsorship tier. Each TOP partner runs its own Games-specific communications program, often anchored by a flagship campaign that becomes the brand's primary marketing asset for the four-year cycle.

The most consequential sponsor PR campaigns of the recent Olympic era have included:

P&G — "Thank You, Mom" (London 2012)

Launched at London 2012, the campaign celebrated the mothers of Olympic athletes. The campaign was global, multi-brand (Pampers, Tide, Olay, Pantene, Gillette, Always), and consistently produced strong brand-recall numbers among Olympic sponsor campaigns. It set a template for modern Olympic-sponsor narrative-building.

Coca-Cola — the longest Olympic sponsorship in history

Coca-Cola has been an Olympic partner since 1928 — among the longest continuous sponsorship arcs in commercial history. The communications program around the Olympic Torch Relay is a Coca-Cola-anchored asset that the brand has used in host countries since the 1990s.

Visa — the financial-services Olympic platform

Visa has been a TOP partner since 1986. The "Team Visa" athlete-sponsorship program — a roster of supported athletes that Visa builds and amplifies each Olympic cycle — is the textbook example of how a financial-services brand can use Olympic positioning to anchor a global narrative about access, opportunity, and the consumer-facing brand value of mobility.

Samsung — Olympic anchor of a Korean brand's global story

Samsung has been a TOP partner since 1998 (with prior roots going back to the 1988 Seoul Games). The brand's Olympic communications operation has been one of the most consistent platforms for Samsung's global premium-brand positioning.

What This Means for the Communications Industry

The Olympics is, structurally, a multi-track communications platform: host-country narrative, athlete-storytelling, TOP-sponsor activation, IOC reputation, and broadcaster relationship management. No single agency can hold all of these tracks for any single Games. The work is distributed by design.

What the agencies running modern Olympic mandates have demonstrated is that Olympic communications has to absorb crisis as a baseline expectation. The Games never deliver clean narrative. The agency's job is to hold the central story together against whatever is breaking around it, and to give the IOC, the host committee, the sponsors, and the athletes a coherent narrative architecture to operate inside.

Related EPR Coverage

• Weber Shandwick — PR Company Profile
• Burson — PR Agency Profile (Hill & Knowlton lineage)
• Edelman — PR Agency Profile
• PR Firms Directory