CHASING OLYMPIC PROFITS : FIRMS IN HOT CONTEST TO SNAG TOURIST DOLLARS.Byline: Adam Levy Bloomberg Business News The Samsung Group The Samsung Group is South Korea's largest conglomerate (chaebol), composed of numerous businesses, including Samsung Electronics, the world's largest electronics company[1] looks and feels like an Olympics sponsor. It's not. The South Korean electronics maker and one of the world's largest manufacturers of semiconductor chips opened Samsung '96 Expo in downtown Atlanta Downtown Atlanta refers to the largest financial district for the city of Atlanta. As defined by the Central Atlanta Progress (CAP) organization, the area measures approximately 4 mi², and was home to 23,300 as of 2006. near Centennial Olympic Park Centennial Olympic Park is a 21 acre (85,000 m²) public park located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA that is owned and operated by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. , where sponsors are setting up their own pavilions. Samsung's $10 million expo features international food, a 50,000-square foot complex with an auditorium, Australian bull-riders - and of course, the Samsung name plastered plas·tered adj. Slang Intoxicated; drunk. plastered Adjective Slang drunk Adj. 1. around the venue. While that may sound like a lot, Samsung's rivals - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s Panasonic brand and Motorola Inc. - paid $40 million in cash and services to be Olympic sponsors. Sure, Panasonic and Motorola get the right to put the Olympic symbols on their products. In terms of visibility, though, Samsung's expo gives the company almost as much exposure as its rivals. Advertising watchdogs are trying to keep the value of multimillion-dollar sponsorships from being diluted. Some 2 million tourists are expected to descend on Atlanta in the next month. A dozen cows are coming here, too. BellSouth Corp., the southeast's regional telephone company, is scattering a dozen cows (short for Cells On Wheels) throughout downtown Atlanta to prepare for an anticipated surge in cellular telephone customers. Nobody is going to confuse these cows with the kind that graze in a field: BellSouth's cows look like ordinary telephone company trucks, but they're equipped with high-capacity cellular telephone antennas and equipment. The cows are all part of a whopping $157 million Atlanta-based BellSouth is spending to cope with communications demands during the Olympics. ``There is going to be record demand for (regular) wired and cellular service,'' said Paul Harman, executive director of 1996 Olympic program at BellSouth. Wired telephone service is expected to soar 26 percent, while cellular business is expected to double, Harman said. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: The Olympic flag and flags from participating nation s frame the IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) Tower in Atlanta, as seen from the Olympic Village Frequently, an Olympic Village is built within an Olympic Park or elsewhere in a host city. Olympic Villages are built to house all participating athletes, as well as officials, trainers, etc. The idea of the Olympic Village comes from Pierre de Coubertin. . Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. |
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