Stephen Adetunji spent six weeks in Italy this year doing something most brand managers only read about: running product activation for the world’s longest-running Olympic sponsor on one of the biggest stages in sports.
Adetunji, Digital Consumer Platform Lead at Coca-Cola HBC Nigeria, was part of the team deployed across the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, which ran from 6 February to 15 March. His brief covered product availability, visibility, and brand representation at concession points throughout the Games.
Coca-Cola holds the longest continuous relationship with the Olympic Movement, having sponsored the 1928 Games in Amsterdam and every edition since, a record now approaching a century. For Milano Cortina 2026, the company activated through the Olympic Torch Relay, fan zones, and sustainability initiatives, including a flagship immersive experience in Milan called The Peak. Adetunji’s team operated within that infrastructure, responsible for ensuring brands were present and accessible at every touchpoint.
What the posting revealed, beyond the logistics, was how Coca-Cola HBC Nigeria is increasingly deploying Nigerian talent into global brand operations. Adetunji noted in a LinkedIn post this month that the assignment required navigating one of the most complex multicultural event environments he had encountered. He referenced colleagues from several other countries, and credited leadership including Nigeria General Manager Goran Sladic and Marketing Director Jolomi Fawehinmi among those who enabled his participation.
Coca-Cola’s partnership with the Olympic Movement has been renewed through 2032, extending what is already the longest continuous collaboration in Olympic history. That longevity creates repeated activation cycles, and with each cycle, the internal pipeline of people who carry institutional knowledge of Olympic execution deepens. Adetunji’s deployment is part of that pipeline building, not just a prestigious assignment but an investment in operational capability that travels back to the local market.
For Coca-Cola HBC Nigeria, which operates in a market where Drinkabl.media recently tracked aggressive consumer activation spending through its “Coke With Meals” promotion, the ability to bring global event execution experience into local strategy is commercially relevant. Consumer engagement playbooks tested at the scale of an Olympics do not stay in the Alps.
The next Winter Olympics fall in 2030. Whether any Nigerian talent returns to the team for that cycle will say something about how seriously the company is investing in its African footprint at a global level.
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