Amid the sometimes-violent protests over the 2008 Beijing Olympics, no one comes away looking good. But one constituency is weathering the tumult fairly well so far: Olympic sponsors.

Some protest organizers have called for a boycott of the companies sponsoring what critics are trying to brand as the Genocide Games, complete with Olympic rings redesigned as handcuffs. The sponsors this year include McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Kodak, General Electric, and Visa.

While multinational companies generally don't enjoy pairing up with dictatorial regimes and human rights abusers, several brand-management and sponsorship experts said the consequences of being affiliated with the 2008 Games in Beijing are likely to be minimal.

Jeff Zucker of NBC said this week that the network had sold 75 percent of its advertising inventory for the Summer Games, showing that advertisers' Olympic appetite remains strong.

And despite the international attention on China's human rights record in Tibet, Sudan, and elsewhere, no sponsor contacted for this article expressed doubt or remorse about its affiliation with the Olympics. Nor did any seem fazed by the protests dogging the traditional torch runs this week in London, Paris, and San Francisco.

"I don't think it's that surprising," says Deirdre Latour, director of public relations and marketing at G.E. "With an event that is that high profile, people are going to try to gain attention for their causes. We just don't think it's appropriate to politicize the Games."

Latour says that G.E. hasn't changed strategies and is relying on the same marketing plans it had in place more than a year ago. Sponsoring the Beijing Games remains a great investment, she adds, because of the size of China and its economy.

If sponsors are immune to pressure from protest groups, they aren't likely to feel the pangs of conscience themselves either. G.E. stands to make $600 million in sales through its role building infrastructure—selling lighting, providing energy and water—in more than 30 Olympic venues in Beijing.

That number doesn't count the return on advertising that the company plans to conduct on-site or intangibles like the benefits of holding companywide contests for Olympic tickets.

Coca-Cola, another Olympic sponsor, declined to comment for this article but provided a formal statement saying that the Beijing Games mark Coke's 80th year of involvement with the Olympics.

"As one of the truly global events," Coke said in its statement, "the Games provide Coca-Cola an unique opportunity to personally connect with fans in the more than 200 countries where we do business."

  Longtime Olympic sponsors like Coke have even less incentive to back out than relative newcomers do, because established sponsors are grandfathered in to lower sponsorship rates, says Jim Andrews, senior vice president of IEG, a sponsorship advisory and research firm.

Discounts, of course, don't mean that sponsors are thrilled with the international ruckus. Especially since they have spent as much as $80 million on a four-year sponsorship of the Olympic program or $100 million for a specific affiliation with the Beijing Olympic Committee.

(Those prices, by the way, are much higher than they were in Athens in 2004 or Sidney in 2000, reflecting the premium placed on reaching 1.3 billion Chinese citizens—and potential consumers.)

"If you're paying all this money to associate with all the positive attributes of the Olympics, now there's a negative that's been introduced," Andrews says. And, he adds, those sums don't even include the expense of Olympics-themed ads and promotional events that make purchasing a sponsorship worthwhile.

In any case, it's too late to for sponsors to do much about it, even if they wanted to. The fees are paid, and the commercials have been produced. "From a sheer bottom-line standpoint, shareholders of those companies would be pretty upset if you threw it away," Andrews says.

Besides, while certain companies, particularly visible consumer brands like Coke or McDonald's, may lose educated consumers, at least temporarily, over an issue like sponsoring the Beijing Olympics, "that number is not large enough to affect the consumers who embrace these brands and who couldn't find Darfur or Tibet on the map," Andrews adds.

Nevertheless, no sponsor plans to be taken by surprise in the face of worsening protests or a catastrophic event like a boycott of the Games by major nations.

As unlikely as such eventualities are, sponsors "need to be preparing themselves for crisis situations," says Dean Crutchfield, senior vice president for marketing at Wolff Olins, a brand consultancy. The firm worked with the International Olympic Committee to develop campaigns for the Athens 2004 and London 2012 Games, as well as with G.E., Visa, and other past and present Olympics sponsors.

Crutchfield advises his clients to anticipate the worst that could happen and to develop contingency plans accordingly. His interest in how the brands weather the Games is academic as well as personal: He predicts that the Beijing Olympics will be "an incredible communications exercise" that will be studied for some time.

For now, no one is criticizing sponsors or predicting adverse consequences for their brands.

"Sponsors have taken a moral stance by virtue of offering significant financial support for the Olympics themselves," says Anthony Shore, global director of naming and writing at Landor Associates, a firm that has worked with Samsung to create branding for its Olympics sponsorship.

"They are celebrating the human ideals embodied in the Olympics," says Shore.

Indeed, some observers speculate that the most valuable brand of this summer's Olympics may ultimately be the most vulnerable.

"If there is a brand that could come out worse," says Crutchfield, "it could be the Olympics itself."

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