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
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