COMPANIES TO GET OLYMPIC PUBLICITY : AREA FIRMS BET PRODUCTS' VISIBILITY WILL PAY.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer

Three San Fernando Valley-area companies found gold at the coming 1996 Olympic Games by employing three B's - bats, banners and bicycles - to reap their windfall.

Gold Graphics in Pacoima won a contract to supply banners hanging from street-light poles throughout Atlanta and identification signs for some corporate sponsors.

Van Nuys-based Easton Aluminum is the official sponsor of the United States baseball team, supplying it with trademark bats and accessories like batting gloves and T-shirts. It also is supplying bats to the women's softball team.

And Diamondback, the big Camarillo-based bicycle maker, sponsors Susan DeMattei, a member of the U.S. mountain bike team, and supplied her a bicycle.

The publicity value figures in their calculations of determining the advantage of having corporate logos displayed to a worldwide audience. Opening ceremonies are Friday.

``It would probably mean, gosh, $150 million in exposure depending on the length of the race and how much is shown on television,'' said Diamondback's marketing manager, Dan Shirey.

The payoff probably won't be anywhere that great, said experts in the field. But they agree with an assessment by Jim Darby, Easton's senior vice president in charge of promotions, that television coverage is what counts from a publicity standpoint.

``The value is only two things: whether some take a picture (of the product) and it appears nationally or whether NBC broadcasts it,'' said Michael Trager, chairman of Sports Marketing and Television International. ``Then the only plus at that point is the publicity you can get if your bike is being ridden and your guy wins.''

Diamondback's trip to Atlanta comes courtesy of DeMattei, who won one of two spots on the woman's mountain bike team in six qualifying races.

It's the first time that Olympic medals will be awarded in this event. And it's good news for Diamondback, which has been sponsoring DeMattei since 1989.

Just how good the news will be is a guess at this point, DeMattei said.

The privately held company sponsors three to 10 riders each year, with the deals averaging $100,000 each.

``Our core audience is the cycling enthusiast,'' Shirey said. ``Her just being in the Olympics puts her at the top of the heap of the mountain-biking community. Since she made the Olympics on our bicycle, it gives the product a winning attitude.''

That's the Diamondback WCF Pro model, which sells for $2,800.

Easton's association with U.S. Olympic teams spans a decade, which explains the more cautious expectations Darby has of the financial windfall.

He said he knows that network programmers control the freebie advertising game. And in the previous Olympics in Barcelona the networks pitched a shutout.

Sparse crowds dictated scant exposure, Darby recalled.

``Baseball was an Olympic sport in Barcelona and I'm not sure how many people even knew the USA had a team,'' he said. ``The question I'm going to have is how much exposure baseball is really going to get. Hopefully, it will be a lot.''

Chances are good this will happen, even though the baseball team is made up of amateurs dreaming of a professional career while their professional counterparts on the basketball court are simply known as the ``Dream Team.''

America has assembled a talented team that won two games against powerful Cuba in an exhibition series.

And the games will be played in Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium on American soil, which Darby hopes will draw capacity crowds and thus the valuable television time.

Whatever happens, though, Easton will be on familiar ground.

The company's sponsorship agreement with the U.S. baseball team dates back 10 years and this year it's supplying bats to Olympians from Australia and Holland.

Darby declines to say how much Easton pays for this privilege.

``It's a donation that helps pay a lot of their bills and we feel it's for a good cause,'' he said.

And it's a situation that Easton is entirely comfortable with even though there is no guarantee that viewers will be able to see a bat being swung.

``It's awfully hard to see an Easton logo on a bat when somebody is swinging it. But they may be able to profit from it by using their own PR,'' said Bob Dorfman, who writes a newsletter on Olympic endorsements for the big advertising agency Foote, Cone & Belding.

This is the kind of exposure Easton is counting on.

This year it will supply the team with about 60 aluminum bats festooned with special Olympic logos. The same bat with a regular corporate logo retails at sporting goods stores for about $100, Darby said.

And after the Olympics some bats with the Team USA logo will go on sale.

And when baseball players from Little League through college go to the bat rack, they may grab an Easton bat.

``So much of the attention on baseball in the U.S. is and always has been on professional baseball, and that's fine,'' Darby said. ``What we're trying to do is show kids that there is the amateur side of the game and the chance to represent your country.''

In Al Gold's case, the money is already in the bank.

Three months ago his company, which manufacturers street banners advertising special events and promotional displays, picked up some business from the Atlanta Organizing Committee and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.

Gold is a veteran of these kinds of events. His company made street banners for the 1984 Olympics, the 1994 World Cup soccer tournament and a couple of Super Bowls.

``They heard about us from the L.A. Olympics and we've been doing special events ever since on a regular basis,'' Gold said. ``A lot of people that work on events of this kind go from event to event. A lot of World Cup people are working on the Atlanta Games and some of the people from L.A. are working in Atlanta, so our reputation carried on for us.''

Gold employs about 200 people and doesn't want to reveal just how much money he's receiving from the Olympic contracts.

``It's not as much as you would think,'' he said. ``An event like the Olympics gets a lot of coverage, but we do three or four times that business with commercial accounts on a regular, ongoing basis. But the Olympics offers very high visibility.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--color) Marta Couzin sews banners at Pacoima-b ased Gold Graphics, which has a contract to supply identification signs for sponsors and street banners at the Olympics.

(2--color) Al Gold's Gold Graphics also made banners for the L.A. Games.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News