In an article in The Times last week (IPL auction likes Morgan a lot), Nick Hoult detailed the fact that only one English player attracted any bids in the annual scramble for overseas players to add star quality to the Indian Premier League. Swann, Bresnan and Trott languished penniless while Eoin Morgan went to Bangalore for $220,000.

Mr Hoult writes that “…as far as England’s players are concerned the future now looks to be a decision between Test cricket and the IPL.” The point he is making here is that because of the timing of England’s various tours relative to the world’s richest cricket competition, players cannot do both.

An inevitable consequence is that players will choose to specialise: to become expert one-day or Twenty20 players (presumably chastised for taking Indian coin) or to focus on “proper cricket” and the multi-day game. I believe this to be true, based on evidence much closer to home, where my 13-year old son recently announced his intention to reduce his limited over cricket for fear it will turn him into a batsman less effective at the three day game (which is as long as it gets for a 13-year old). Sage words, and I wish that more illustrious talents would abide by them.

Where my views diverge from Mr Hoult’s and, I suspect, from those of a great number of “purist” fans of cricket, is that I think it is a brilliant idea for players to specialise, to choose one format of the sport over another. In this way they will get better at what they do and provide greater enjoyment for us all. If this happens then it will hasten recognition from the game’s administering authorities that Twenty20, one-day and test cricket are essentially different “codes” of the sport requiring different skills, different players and different commercial models to support them. This means a greater range of opportunities for players, viewers and sponsors, and I think this is A Good Thing.

I point to rugby as evidence of this positive effect. Rugby union, rugby league and rugby sevens are different codes of the same game. Some fans enjoy all codes, others prefer one. Players occasionally swap from one to the other, or develop from one to the other, but most players choose to specialise. All shapes and sizes of player are accommodated across the three codes and sponsors enjoy a wider range of commercial opportunities. Rugby in its broadest sense is richer as a result; it’s even made it into the Olympics.

Twenty20 in 2020 has a nice ring to it. My only regret is that Garrett jnr, having made his choice, will not be opening the batting.

By Scott Garrett on January 29th, 2010

Tags: Cricket, ICC World Twenty20, Indian Premier League, Olympics, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultants, Sport

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Synergy’s Aviva Ocean Racing campaign featuring Dee Caffari has been chosen as campaign of the week in PR Week.   Click here for the article.

By Synergy on January 22nd, 2010

Tags: Press Clipping

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The role of technology sponsors in creating the technical infrastructure behind global events such as the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup is largely unrecognised outside of the sponsorship and rights holder communities. There are two reasons for this: consumers and the media are more interested in the show than in the tech; and most tech sponsors are B2B brands.

But the scale of these events - the Olympics ranks among the world’s biggest peacetime projects – together with the rapid evolution of their technological requirements, makes the role of tech sponsors increasingly vital to their success, and the scope of this group of sponsors’ contributions increasingly complex and impressive.

I was reminded of all this last week at an Editorial Intelligence London 2012 seminar, when Stuart Hill, who leads the BT London 2012 Delivery Programme, gave a fascinating insight into the scale of BT’s London 2012 technical operation. Here are a few extracts from what he said:

BT is providing 80,000 connections across all 94 London 2012 venues, as well as 16,500 fixed lines, 14,000 mobile phone SIM cards and 1,000 wireless access points;

The information this network can support – calls, emails, images, texts – will amount to 6 Gigabytes per second: the equivalent of 6,000 novels, or the entire contents of Wikipedia, every 5 seconds;

Whereas 30% of the coverage of Beijing 2008 was digital, 100% of the coverage of London 2012 will be digital, meaning that consumers will be able to watch every sport in High Definition, when they want to watch it.

Stuart also made two other observations which as an Olympic Marketing practitioner I found very interesting. 

The first was about how London 2012 is playing out within BT. Stuart characterised London 2012 as a being like a slow drumbeat inside BT, beating gradually louder, and recalled the excitement of staff when the company lit up the BT Tower to celebrate 1,000 days to go to London 2012.

The second was the highly perceptive comment that BT’s London 2012 delivery role is effectively a silent one – ensuring that when people use BT’s London 2012 services, they enjoy a flawless experience. This of course, emphasises the crucial role for BT’s 2012-related marketing: the need to bring to life for customers and consumers the company’s enabling role in their London 2012 experiences – because unlike B2B tech sponsors, BT needs powerful B2C marketing behind London 2012 to drive its retail business.

I came away from the seminar thinking about these two observations in particular. Is BT’s current B2C London 2012 marketing creating a drumbeat (to use Stuart’s phrase) among customers and consumers as well as staff? I’d be interested in your views – feel free to comment below. And on this point, let me leave you with a personal perspective: as a longstanding BT customer (fixed line and broadband) the only London 2012 related communication I’ve received so far is the London 2012 logo on the outside of the envelope that contains my monthly bill.

By Tim Crow on January 20th, 2010

Tags: London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship

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Having won the MCCA ‘Best Campaign Featuring Sponsorship’ last year for its Team GB campaign around the Beijing Olympics, it’s great to be able to say that the Powerade 2009 InnerGear campaign has again been shortlisted in this year’s MCCA BEST Awards. Building on the insights and imagery of the Team GB campaign, Powerade brought the same InnerGear core creative idea to two of its international rugby assets – the English and Welsh rugby teams.

The 2009 edition featured England captain Steve Borthwick, Paul Sackey and IRB World Player of the Year, Shane Williams, in some equally impactful creative, and was supported through the line by Powerade’s cross agency team.

By Jonathan Izzard on January 20th, 2010

Tags: Beijing 2008, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, Rugby, Sponsorship, Synergy, Team GB

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When I tell you that I’m a big fan of Chrome, relax, I’m not hinting that anyone get Westwood round to pimp my ride – I am rather referencing Google Chrome, the web browser launched in late 2008 by the ubiquitous internet behemoth.

Having used it as my default browser since downloading the programme over a year ago, I’ve since installed it on my home PC and laptop, as a welcome break from Internet Explorer. I realise that I’m not the first person to break convention here, with any Mac users out there, along with the more technologically savvy, already well aware of life after Microsoft when browsing the web, with Safari – Apple’s own browser – and Mozilla’s Firefox, the main contenders for IE’s crown in the years BC (that’s Before Chrome); however, December 2009 finally saw Google’s new window onto the web overtake Safari’s hard-won market share. No mean feat, a year after launch.

This leaves the stats from December 2009 looking something like:

1. Internet Explorer - 62.69%

2. Mozilla Firefox - 24.61%

3. Google Chrome - 4.63%

4. Safari - 4.46%

5. Opera - 2.93%

6. Netscape Navigator - 0.32%

7. Various others - 0.68%

(Source: Market Share)

This may not look too significant a shift, although given that this % represents around 40 million users, and that Internet Explorer’s global usage dropped by almost 7% last year (from 69.23% in Feb 2009), you might start to appreciate the long-term machinations of Messrs Page and Brin, and how these might impact on one William Henry Gates III in the war of the super-rich supernerds.

In quite a major move for the brand, Google has even been running an offline ad campaign publicising Chrome. Commuters at Oxford Circus may well be familiar with both the posters and digital escalator creatives drawing attention to the ‘fast, new browser, made for everyone’. Indeed, in the lead-up to Christmas, Google engaged in another rare piece of ATL, with a Metro wrap (you may have seen this repeated last week), as well as a call to action for people to make Chrome one of their Xmas gifts to a loved one, via the www.givechrome.com website. Well, it’s better than a pair of socks.

This activity certainly translated into curiosity amongst web users, with searches for Chrome overtaking Internet Explorer for the first time ever, which Google – or its media department – would doubtless argue contributed to its rise in the browser rankings that very month.

So, what’s good about the product? Well, it’s very clean, clear, fast and free; you can have lots of different web pages running at the same time with no drag, and if any particular page crashes, Chrome simply shuts down that tab, rather than the whole browser. I’d definitely recommend it, although the programme is still not a catch-all: certain Microsoft plug-ins are incompatible with Chrome (hmmmm, how unexpected), making it difficult to use some online applications such as the SkyPlayer. For everyday browsing of the internet, however, it’s fantastic.

Other than the slow burn process of accruing new advocates and users, what next for Google Chrome? The answer is actually slightly more ambitious than you might think, with Google now moving further into Microsoft’s back yard through the development of the Google Chrome OS (Operating System). Whilst it’s still a way off, with an official release scheduled for the latter half of 2010, the concept is remarkably different to the traditional Windows offering. As outlined by company chiefs at Google HQ in November last year, the OS is designed with a focus on three user requirements: ‘Speed…Simplicity…Security’, achieving its aims via a radical approach: to all intents and purposes, Google Chrome OS only works when you are online.

What the hell? So I’ve got to be online for my PC to work, you say? Well, sort of.

Although this may sound pretty restricting, Google are not setting themselves the challenge of beating Microsoft at its own game, but rather carving up a piece of the action for themselves, namely through appealing to the burgeoning netbook market. Sales of these small, light, web-friendly PCs were up 103% in 2009, and with decreased price points and increased wi-fi availability, this trend looks to continue. To date, the concept has received a mixed reaction: for the always-online professional netbookers out there, Google are preaching to the converted, with a promise of a system that will be ready to surf the web within seven seconds of power-up; plus they won’t need to store all their docs on their hard disc, with data instead stored remotely and accessed via the web. Google aren’t the first to use a ‘cloud’ system, but probably are the first to take the concept of virtual storage for mobile PC users to such a commercial extreme.

From starting life as the cleanest, fastest and most efficient way to find what you need on the internet, Google has, in an incredibly short space of time become part of our culture, our very vocabulary. And in today’s information age, there appears to be no stopping them: news, video, mail, maps, photos, phones, toolbars, Trends, translation, into China (and out again?) – and we search, and we search, and we search…

By Jonathan Izzard on January 19th, 2010

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, China, Digital marketing, Media

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Marketing features Andy Gray signing up as a Betfair football ambassador, an agreement negotiated by Synergy.  Click here for the article.

By Synergy on January 18th, 2010

Tags: Press Clipping

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Tim Crow comments in the Wall Street Journal on the increasing importance of social media in brands’ activation of major sponsorships such as the FIFA World Cup. To read the article, click here

By Synergy on January 13th, 2010

Tags: Press Clipping

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Channel 4′s successful bid against the BBC to win the UK broadcast rights to the London 2012 Paralympics defied predictions and surprised leading observers. The latest in a series of bold and innovative moves by the London 2012 Organising Committee in their quest to create and deliver a Games for a new era and a new generation, it’s a decision that will be good for the Paralympics, for consumers, and for London 2012 sponsors.

Justified or not, there was always a concern that the BBC would prioritise resources to the Olympics over the Paralympics. Channel 4′s bid removes the issue with a raft of unprecedented commitments: re-branding itself as The Paralympics Channel during the Games; 150 hours of Games-time coverage;  two ten-part peak time documentaries in 2011 and 2012; dedicated coverage of the Paralympic Torch Relay; and the biggest marketing campaign in the broadcaster’s history - a particularly crucial feature given the key Paralympic legacy objective of changing attitudes to disability.

But not only is changing to Channel 4 all good for the Paralympics: it’s good for consumers too.

Being free-to-air, access for all to coverage of the Games is assured – a vital consideration. Channel 4 also has a strong and proud track record of innovative coverage (Italian football, horse racing, cricket) that consumers will no doubt now see applied to the Paralympics And isn’t it good for consumers – indeed for society as a whole – that after a decade of Big Brother, Channel 4 is returning to its traditional diversity/minority remit?

I’d also argue that for consumers, having two London 2012 broadcasters is better than one, in that the inherent competition it will engender between the two stations (already visible in their somewhat barbed PR around the announcement of Channel 4′s win) will drive up coverage quality.

And finally, it’s undeniable that Channel 4 winning the rights to cover the Paralympics is brilliant news for the London 2012 Games’ sponsors. Leveraging an Olympic and Paralympic sponsorship is one of toughest challenges in the sponsorship playbook, owing to the nature of the rights: leveraging it in the UK, with – up to now – the non-commercial BBC as the only Olympic broadcaster has made it even tougher. The entry of a commercial station offers London 2012′s sponsors a new, and welcome, marketing option.

By Tim Crow on January 12th, 2010

Tags: London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics

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Tim Crow comments in the Sunday Times on the commercial potential of the planned UK Rugby 7s league.  Click here for the article.

By Synergy on January 4th, 2010

Tags: Press Clipping

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Back in September I wrote a blog about the Synergy team outing to the Olympic Village. We were hosted by Des Blake, a local resident who is working with the ODA to promote the tours available to the public. Well, having read our blog, Des has been in touch with the Synergy team and I thought I would share his comments with you:

Dear Caroline,

My name is Des Blake, thank you so much for your kind and positive words on your blog about my first tour. Do you remember I said I may see you or get touch on 2012 well I am keeping my promise. Please see picture, and today’s date 2012!!!

I now have a far better out look on life, more positive about things, and local people are always stopping me in the street to chat about the 2012 games! (When I have my 2012 top on or when they see my Olympic badge!) I have always had a dream since a boy to represent the UK in the Olympics, or to be involved in one, I feel by doing this work I have gone along way in achieving this!

The pleasure I get from for seeing the smiles and the excitement on the people’s faces and the thanks they give me as they leave the tour bus is incredible!

Kind Regards,

Des Blake

Des, thank you for getting in touch and we’re really pleased to hear that the Olympics is already making a difference. We look forward to seeing how the village develops and hope that the tours keep you busy right up to July 2012.

By Caroline Ayling on January 4th, 2010

Tags: London 2012

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