LONDON – 1^st February 2013: Synergy’s groundbreaking London 2012 social media campaign ‘Golden BMW’ last night won the coveted European Sponsorship Association (ESA) Award for Social Media Activation.

As part of the BMW sponsorship of London 2012, the campaign saw a specially-created fleet of Golden BMWs tour the country visiting the Olympic Torch Relay route a day ahead of the Relay to capitalise on the anticipation of the Flame’s arrival. The integrated campaign, led by social media and PR, encouraged consumers fans to ‘Spot, Snap and Share’ photographs of the highly distinctive Golden BMWs in social media for their chance to win tickets to the Games.

The 70-day campaign reached over a third of the UK population, increased BMW’s Facebook fans by 15% and inspired over 50,000 people to visit BMW dealerships.  

The ESA judges commented:  “The Golden BMW campaign was wholly based on social media with great engagement and business results.  It was hard to achieve standout in the busy Olympic Torch period, but the Golden BMW clearly achieved all the targets they set themselves”.

 Tim Crow, Synergy CEO, said: “We are incredibly proud to have won this highly coveted award in such a competitive category. It is particularly satisfying to have won it in the context of London 2012, the first Games of the mainstream social media era, and confirms our position as leaders in creating and delivering social media campaigns for sponsors. ”

Synergy also received the prize for one of the new categories of the evening – the ESA Professional Development Award. This category recognises the agency with the best approach to professional and career development through training and education. The judges were particularly impressed with the depth of commitment to staff and sophisticated programmes for career expansion that in turn created a real sense of mutual progression.

 Alison Moor, Synergy MD said: “It was great news that team’s collective commitment to professional development has been recognised.  At Synergy, we put our people at the heart of our business.  The Synergy culture is about taking part and being part of the team.  Learning through experience and collaborating is high on everyone’s agenda throughout the company.” 

 - Ends -

 For further information please contact:

Kate McGregor (Press officer at Synergy)

Contact: 020 3128 6834

Email: Kate.Mcgregor@synergy-sponsorship.com

Notes to editors

About Synergy:

Synergy (www.synergy-sponsorship.com) is a multidisciplinary specialist sponsorship consultancy, which guides brands from strategy to delivery. It counts Betfair, BMW, Bupa, Chivas, The Coca-Cola Company, Diageo, RBS and SSE among its clients.

Synergy is the UK’s most recognised agency of its type, having won over forty major awards in its 28-year history, including having been named by Marketing magazine as UK Sponsorship Agency of The Year in 2012, as well as Sports Industry Agency of the Year and Hollis Sponsorship Consultancy of the Year.

 About Engine:

Engine is the UK’s largest and fastest growing independent communications company. Engine employs more than 700 people, containing a family of best in class communications businesses serving the consumer market, the corporate market and the public sector. Engine is an employee-owned business, with one in five staff owning shares in the company. For more information, visit: www.theenginegroup.com

By Synergy on February 1st, 2013

Tags: BMW, Default, Digital marketing, Experiential marketing, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship consultants, Olympic Torch Relay, PR, Press Clipping, Rio 2016 Sponsorship, Rio 2016 Sponsorship Consultants, Socialympics, Sponsorship, Synergy

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By Oli Richards on February 1st, 2013

Tags: Athletics, Blogging, BMW, Brand marketing, Branded content, Brazil 2014, Broadcast sponsorship, Commonwealth Games, Communications, Consultancy, Content, Cricket, Digital marketing, Engine, Football, Football Sponsorship, Glasgow 2014, grass roots sport, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Manchester United, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, PR, Public relations, RBS 6 Nations, Rugby, Rugby World Cup, Ryder Cup, Sponsorship, Synergy

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We had a nice surprise when we opened the IOC’s latest Olympic Review*: throughout the cover story on the Olympics and social media, the IOC gives a starring role to #Socialympics, the term and event we created early last year to signify London 2012′s status as the first Olympic & Paralympic Games of the mainstream social media era. Here’s an example:

Even though #Socialympics went viral and became part of the global vocabulary around the Olympics, it’s still great to see it receiving ‘official’ recognition from Lausanne.

Here’s a reminder of when #Socialympics was born.

*You can subscribe the the Olympic Review via the IOC website here.

By Synergy on January 7th, 2013

Tags: Default, Olympic sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship consultants, Olympics, Paralympics, Rio 2016, Rio 2016 Sponsorship, Rio 2016 Sponsorship Consultants, Sochi 2014, Social Media, Socialympics

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Around 60 years ago modern sponsorship was born, driven by the mass penetration of television and broadcasters’ simultaneous discovery of sport as premium entertainment content. Brands, naturally, followed. Subsequently there have been three major evolutions of sponsorship, and we are now at the start of the fourth, which is in many ways the most exciting and far-reaching yet.

In the first evolution, in the 1960s and ’70s, sponsorship was a dark art: a minority activity among brands and, inevitably given its newness, more than anything a leap of faith. The sell was all about how much on-screen coverage you could achieve for a logo. Tobacco led the way by embracing motor racing and just about every other sport, and stadium naming rights deals in the USA began to multiply.

History is made at the 1968 South African Grand Prix with the first fully-liveried tobacco-sponsored F1 cars, for Winston's Gunston brand

And as with every evolution of sponsorship, this type is still very much around today: the architect of Emirates’ sponsorship strategy, Mike Simon, for example, freely admitted a few years ago that Emirates’ sponsorship strategy was totally predicated on how many media impressions a sponsorship achieved.

The second evolution began in the late 1970s, when Horst Dassler and Patrick Nally created the multi-sponsor event model for the FIFA World Cup, and sold it to Coca-Cola. The IOC followed, so did just about every other major event organiser in sports, and the model became the template for how most sponsorship is still sold today.

Coca-Cola's pioneering sponsorship of the 1978 World Cup created the template for brand partnerships with major events

In the third evolution, which began in the 1990s, sponsorship took off and brands got strategic about it. Sponsorship was everywhere, if you did it right it worked, and if you weren’t doing it – especially if you were a global brand – your competitors almost certainly were. This drove intense competition for key assets and big increases in rights fees. Sponsorship became seriously big business, so big business began to think and act seriously about sponsorship. QED: by the end of the ’90s, for the first time, you could see brands beginning to adopt global sponsorship strategies based on platforms rather than on individual sponsorships. When I look back at this shift, I think in particular of Nike and they way they planned and activated football worldwide, and of Red Bull, who created a global portfolio of owned assets to drive their brand USP. Familiar behaviour now, but very new at the time.

Red Bull Stratos was the latest episode in Red Bull's long term global brand activation strategy

I believe the fourth evolution of sponsorship has started, and that it’s the social evolution, in two senses. First, in only a few short years, social media has come from nowhere to play a starring role in the sponsorship mix. It is transforming consumer behaviour and brand marketing strategies, especially around sponsorship, with an impact not seen since the advent of TV. Second, the ability of sponsorship to help brands drive and showcase their social responsibility programmes is now everywhere you look in the sponsorship landscape. And it’s no coincidence that these are simultaneous developments, because there is increasing evidence to suggest that social media is accelerating brands’ social behaviour.

When we look back at this fourth evolution, I believe that London 2012 will be seen as a defining moment of these two seismic forces in action in a big way together for the first time: the transformation of Olympic and Paralympic Games marketing in the shape of the Socialympics (a term Synergy coined back in February which subsequently went viral globally) coming together with an unprecedented array of activities by the Games’ sponsors to use sport, through the Olympic and Paralympic Games, for social good.

Welcome to the evolution.

By Tim Crow on December 13th, 2012

Tags: Brand marketing, Default, London 2012, Naming Rights, New Product Development, Olympic sponsorship, Social Media, Socialympics, Sponsorship, Synergy, Television

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Analysis of industry data suggests that the F1 ecosystem raises over £1b per year from sponsorship. This includes Team Sponsors and Suppliers (ranging from £100m for the big boys to £20m for the smaller teams), F1 Partners (around £25m per year in cash or Value in Kind from each of the 6 global partners) and Race Sponsorship (around £10m for each of the races with title sponsors plus trackside advertising).

To put that into context, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games raised around the same amount (£750m from domestic sponsors plus around £250m contribution from the IOC for TOP partners) – but that was for a 4-year cycle.

So here’s a question: Given how much is spent on it from some of the world’s leading brands, why is F1 Sponsorship not at the leading edge of sponsorship thinking and activation?

It’s fair to say that F1 is ahead of the game in virtually everything else it does. So surely F1 Sponsors should be cleaning up at the major sponsorship industry awards.  In fact, over the past 5 years, an F1 sponsorship has won only once out of a possible 47 SIA awards (Vodafone’s Best Sponsorship of a Team or Individual in 2009). Case studies from F1 should be inspiring sponsors in other sports.  Here at Synergy, we should regularly be showcasing examples from F1 in the ‘What We Love’ section of Synopsis. But this just isn’t the case – at least not to the extent that one would expect.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great pieces of activation in F1 (I’ll point out some of them later), but as a whole, F1 sponsorship is pretty uninspiring.

Having run the Reuters sponsorship of WilliamsF1 from 2000 – 2003 (yes – I agree – it was nowhere near ‘award-winning’!), I thought I would have a go at answering that question based on my own personal experiences.

1. Most Formula One sponsorships are B2B

Reuters primarily used F1 for B2B relationship building. A quick scan of F1 sponsors shows that over 40% have significant B2B businesses. There is little better than F1 if you have a relatively small number of high-value, global customers who you reach through targeted sales and marketing programmes.  Travelling around the world to all the key markets, Formula One and Paddock Club™ are the absolute gold standard of corporate hospitality. With this being the focus of the brands’ activation programme, it is little wonder that it remains unseen by the mass audience, award panels and the Synopsis editors.

The activation challenge for the B2B partners, however, is to create the most compelling brand stories and event experiences to attract their audience.  Because the fact is, especially in the small markets, most of the B2B sponsors are going after a very similar audience, in some cases exactly the same people.

2. There is too much focus on brand exposure and logos on cars and not enough on activation

Whenever brand exposure is such a critical part of the sponsorship package, it is easy to rely too heavily on it at the expense of all the other things you can do with the sponsorship. I absolutely hate the “media value” figures that are at the heart of so many F1 sponsorships.  However, it is easy to measure and as long as the media value is bigger than the cost of the sponsorship, brands can be tempted to think “job done”. In comparison, Olympic sponsors can’t rely on any media value to justify their sponsorship.  That’s why they have to work much harder and be far more creative with their activation.

A knock-on effect of this over-emphasis on media value is the fact that it can lead to an under-investment in activation.  Typically, the rights fee is so high (because brands are paying for the exposure) that there isn’t enough left over for activation. I’m not a big believer in any rule-of-thumb ratios, but the proportion of rights fee to activation spend when I was at Reuters is definitely not going to make it into any how-to textbooks. I suspect this isn’t unusual for F1 sponsors up and down the Paddock

3. The calendar gives you no time to plan and develop great campaigns

The F1 season is relentless. The first race is in early March and the last race is in late November. In between is a never-ending cycle of travelling and managing the day-to-day execution of race weekends. Everyone goes on holiday during the 4-week summer break and at the end of the season, which then leads into Christmas. Trust me, if you want a year to fly past, get a job in F1.

Which basically just leaves January and February to do any sort of campaign development. But even those months tend to be dominated by tactical planning for the season ahead. There just isn’t the time to think about a season-long campaign or a brilliant piece of activation.

Another challenge is the global scale required by an activation campaign. Japan, Abu Dhabi, Britain, the US and Brazil have very little in common with each other from a marketing perspective.  So as an F1 sponsor you are sort of in limbo between creating and delivering a global campaign that doesn’t quite work in loads of markets and developing local campaigns which feel a bit ‘small’ and short term.

4. The F1 community is too closed

There are some great people who work in F1.  However, it needs more ‘churn’.

For example, when I needed a sponsorship agency, everyone I invited to pitch was effectively a specialist F1 agency. I understand why most sponsors do that, but it leads to a form of ‘groupthink’ where new ideas are thrown out in favour of “what we did last year” or “what we do with our other clients”.

This happens up and down the paddock. If an F1 team needs a new Account Manager, they are likely to hire someone from one of the other teams. If a brand needs an F1 Sponsorship Director, they are likely to hire someone who has done a similar job at another sponsor. If an F1 agency hires a new Account Director, they typically hire someone who already has F1 experience.

The danger of this ‘closed’ community is that it loses the fresh influences and perspectives that drive creativity.

I know it’s tough (I’ve been there myself) but I think F1 sponsors need to be braver and set the bar higher for their activation campaigns. The benchmark should not be: “we want to create the best F1 sponsorship campaign”, but rather “we want to create the best sponsorship campaign”. And to do that, I think that it is critical for sponsors to look for inspiration outside the very small world of F1.

The point of this blog is not to say that there are no good F1 activations – because clearly there are some great examples.

My point is simply that given the number of world-class brands who are sponsors in F1, the amount that they invest and the possibilities of F1 as a platform, there should be far more ground-breaking activation programmes than there are.

Some of our Favourite F1 Activation Case Studies:

Johnnie Walker – Step Inside the Circuit Series

Johnnie Walker extended this campaign with some experiential activity in Travel Retail environments but at its core was some great behind-the-scenes content, from Monte Carlo (below), India, Singapore and other races

Vodafone:

One car, no team:

Camping:

Santander:

London Grand Prix:

The Silverstone Chase

Hugo Boss - Dress Me for the Finale

Using a special online configurator, consumers in each country could create bespoke designs of the drivers’ race suits. The drivers wore the designs during qualifying for each race, while the best two designs as voted by the audience were worn on the Sunday during the Brazilian Grand Prix. Boss also did a good job of connecting this activation to their social media and retail channels:

Red Bull – Faces for Charity

In exchange for a donation to charity (which Red Bull matched), consumers could upload a photo which was then put on the car for the British Grand Prix.

Vodafone –  Drive to the Big League

Vodafone introduced this initiative at the British Grand Prix in 2010 which offered one of their small business customers the chance to put their logo on the car for the British Grand Prix.  Vodafone have taken it to a whole new level in India now, where they have combined it with a Dragons Den style TV programme to select the winner – watch it – it’s brilliant!!!

See – it is possible – more of that please!!!

By Carsten Thode on November 15th, 2012

Tags: Advertising, Alcohol, Awards, Brand marketing, Branded content, Consultancy, Content, Default, Digital marketing, Experiential marketing, Facebook, Formula 1, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, Red Bull, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants, Synergy, Synergy Loves, Synopsis

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So, that’s it. London 2012 is over. Now we’re just left with misty-eyed memories, an impossible choice for SPOTY, a never-ending supply of video montages and the realisation that we’re unlikely to see anything quite like it again in our lifetimes.

It also provided a watershed moment for sponsorship in the UK. Ever since London was awarded the Games in 2005, London 2012 provided a focal point and growth engine for an entire industry.  So where do we go from here?

What will London 2012 do for the perception of sponsorship in the UK

London 2012 did deliver some predictable anti-sponsorship stories. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Cadbury, Dow, Atos Origin and BP were all given a bit of stick (for one reason or another), while numerous articles questioned the ROI of Olympic sponsorships, the relative success of ambush campaigns and various activation #fails.

But all of those issues were pushed into the background once the Games began and for that reason they will not be the enduring perspective of sponsorship in the wake of London 2012.

The narrative is already starting to crystallise around the positive stories.  Sainsbury’s are out of the blocks early, claiming a 5.6% uplift in sales and a meaningful 0.3% market share gain as a result of their brilliant Paralympic sponsorship. Adidas, in fact, were able to confirm a positive ROI before the Olympics even started. You can expect the other sponsors to either follow suit or keep quiet.

No sponsor will admit to destroying value (why would they) while the positive case studies will be accentuated and decorated with plenty of awards. The overwhelming perception will be that sponsorship of London 2012 created business value and, of course, it is in everyone’s interest to support that perception.

Empirically, the sponsorship market is remaining buoyant as we continue to see a series of record-breaking new deals and contract extensions including Barclays/Premier League, Chevy/Manchester United, Samsung/Chelsea, Wonga/Newcastle, Capital One/League Cup, Investec/ECB, and O2/RFU and BMW/ RFU.

There is no doubt that London 2012 has accelerated the overall development of sponsorship in the UK – a trend which we see continuing as brands see how sponsorship can help them deliver their business, brand and marketing objectives.

What will the London 2012 Sponsors do next?

With the exception of Acer (whose category is disappearing with the convergence of consumer electronic devices), the rest of the TOP sponsors will continue on their Olympic journey. Some of these (e.g. Coke, McDonald’s, Visa, Samsung, etc.), have a strong portfolio of global sponsorship assets so probably aren’t in the market for any big new assets.

But the local sponsors, including Lloyds TSB, BA, BT, BP, Cadbury, EDF and UPS have an Olympic-sized hole in their marketing programmes.

BMW have already moved to sign an innovative new deal with the RFU to create the BMW Performance Academy, which creates a strong post-Olympic transition.

But the big question is what comes next for the others. All of these brands are in highly competitive markets with aggressive competitors who have major sponsorship assets in place.  It is probably safe to assume that some of them are looking for their next big play.

Another angle to consider is whether there is a group of brands that have been keeping the powder dry for the past few years. If one of your competitors was an Olympic sponsor, it might have been a clever strategy to avoid fighting a losing battle for exposure. We might start seeing them emerge into the sponsorship market with big ambitions and healthy budgets.

All of this will create demand in the pipeline, which will fuel the competition for the best sponsorship assets.

What interesting properties are available?

I have to start this section with an enormous health warning: when developing a sponsorship strategy, identifying the right property should be the last step in the process. First, you should develop a sponsorship strategy – a clear articulation of precisely how sponsorship will help you deliver your business, brand and marketing objectives. Only then should you look to identify the assets that will best deliver that strategy.

But that’s not going to stop me giving you a quick overview of some of the key opportunities that are out there. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list – just a quick look at why this is being called the ‘Golden Decade’ for sport in the UK.

Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games:

Coming so soon after London 2012, there is a danger that the Commonwealth Games will feel like an anti-climax. Of course, it won’t be anything like the scale of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, but the Commonwealth Games have a unique personality which some brands have historically been able to tap into very successfully, like Imperial Leather in 2002 and NAB in 2006.

Glasgow 2014 will be nothing like Delhi 2010. First and foremost, this is because many of the biggest names and most famous athletes will be coming to Scotland. The fact that the Home Nations compete as independent teams will add some interesting storylines, while the 2014 Referendum will ensure that the “Scotland” angle provides an interesting political backdrop and a lightning rod for Scottish national pride (despite the Governing Body’s best attempt to de-politicise it).

Rugby World Cup 2015:

OK – so Rugby doesn’t have the global appeal of Football, but make no mistake, the Rugby World Cup will dominate the UK sports agenda in 2015.  With a 6-week tournament taking place in all four corners of the country (plus Cardiff) and Stuart Lancaster building a team that can challenge for the title, the opportunity for sponsors is clear.

Athletics World Championships and World Paralympics Championships 2017:

This is as close as we’re going to get to a repeat of Super Saturday. With the IAAF and IPC World Championships taking place in the same city for the first time, we will be able to see first-hand the legacy left by Mo Farah, Jess Ennis, Greg Rutherford, David Weir and Jonny Peacock.

Ryder Cup 2014:

Anyone who watched the Ryder Cup last month knows that it delivers incredibly compelling sporting drama. It has an interesting narrative that opens the activation window beyond the 3-day event, while the event itself generates interest that stretches far beyond traditional golf fans.

UK Athletics and other Sports Governing Bodies:

After a 13-year partnership, Aviva has announced that it is not extending its deal with UK Athletics. UKA have announced that they are hoping to move away from a single title sponsor towards a “Champions League model”. However, I don’t think it’s a big enough asset to split into parts, with more value to one brand looking to “own the sport”.

While this isn’t public knowledge yet, the industry grapevine is abuzz with at least three other Olympic sports whose governing bodies are looking for new title sponsors. In many ways, this was entirely predictable – sponsoring an Olympic sport is a classic ambush technique. But it is a shame to see brands be so transparent and head for the hills as soon as the Olympics leaves town. Still, it provides a great opportunity for new brands to come in and create something brilliant. Do you like what Sky has done with Cycling and British Gas has done with Swimming? If so, there are plenty more opportunities like that.

Venue Naming Rights:

Venue naming rights are one of the fastest growing sectors in sponsorship. While O2 and Emirates have already done it well in the UK, looking to the US shows us what our future might look like. Over there, the Barclays Centre and MetLife Stadium are just the latest in a long line of major naming rights deals.

Over here, rights holders are actively selling naming rights for the Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, “Copper Box” and VeloPark, while ExCel wants you to put “your brand here”.

Over the next decade, we could be also looking at a few new Premier League stadiums under construction. Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs, Everton and QPR all have expressed the desire to either redevelop their existing stadia or build a new one. You can bet that most (if not all) of these will come with a naming rights sales pitch.

Arsenal Shirt Sponsorship:

AON, Standard Chartered, Samsung and DHL (for a training kit) all set the bar for the value of the kit sponsorship for a high-profile Premiership Team. Then Chevy came along and did a couple of backflips over that bar. Brands clearly still see huge value in these deals. If you are one of them, I would give Arsenal a call.

The Football League:

Npower announced recently that they would not be extending their title sponsorship of The Football League. The great thing about this asset is that it gives a brand the ability to reach deep into 72 communities around the country. It’s difficult to think of a better asset for a brand that wants to touch and be ever-present with the mass market.

England Cricket Team:

Brit Insurance cited a “shift in business strategy” for the decision to end their England shirt sponsorship, which they only signed in 2010. Their contract does not end until 2014, but this announcement clearly signals that they are looking for an early exit. If you move quickly, you can even be in place in time for the 2013 Ashes Series.

Self Created Assets:

Red Bull have been blurring the definition of sponsorship and re-writing the rules for many years. But I think that Red Bull Stratos has finally brought us to the tipping point where brands are more willing to risk blazing their own trail with self-created and other owned assets. The power of sponsorship comes from its ability to give you access to your audience’s heart and brands now see that they don’t need an established asset to take them there.

All in all, I am convinced that London 2012 will not be the high water mark for sponsorship in the UK. Rather, it will be the springboard which accelerates sponsorship to even more exciting places. The assets are there to do some interesting things and brands will become better and more ambitious in terms of how they use them. The accelerated development of the sponsorship industry will be one of the real legacies of London 2012, which is an exciting thought for all of us who are part of it.

By Carsten Thode on October 30th, 2012

Tags: Advertising, Ambush Marketing, Consultancy, Default, London 2012 sponsorship, Naming Rights, Olympic sponsorship, RBS 6 Nations, Red Bull, Ryder Cup, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy

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A revealing statistic from an interview with the IOC’s Marketing Director Timo Lumme in this month’s SportBusiness:

‘The sheer volume of [London 2012] sponsor activity presented challenges, particularly for the team responsible for signing-off on the use of Olympic marks and imagery. This time around they had to deal with 25,000 different partner activations, that is more than double the number for Beijing.’

More than double. And this despite Beijing 2008 having 12 TOP sponsors to London’s 11.

Assuming that Timo is only talking about TOPs, that works out at an average of around 2,500 activations per TOP for London 2012 versus an average of around 1,000 for Beijing 2008. Remarkable. Why did this happen and what conclusions can we draw?

I’d suggest three in particular.

1. China Crisis. Owing to China’s human rights record, Beijing 2008 was highly controversial, with the Torch Relay in particular the target for headline-making worldwide protests, which subsequently led to the IOC restricting the Relay to the host country from 2010. As a consequence, many Olympic partners were understandably reluctant to run Beijing-themed global promotions and concentrated their efforts inside China.

London 2012, in marked contrast, presented no such issues, with many sponsors, for example Coca-Cola’s ‘Move To The Beat’ campaign, making London the thematic centrepiece of global campaigns. Result? Far more sponsor activity around London than around Beijing.

We concluded that for the first time social media would be one of the Games sponsors’ key activation channels, which was subsequently borne out by the explosion of social activity during London 2012. This would seem to be the second major factor behind the upweight in TOP activation.

3. Procter & Gamble. New to the TOP programme for London 2012, P&G created a veritable storm of activity around the Games, to the extent that at times it felt impossible to avoid. Crucially, however, in this context, they activated not just around the P&G corporate brand (the strategy for which I’ve written about before, for example here and here) but globally across 34 of their brands.

By Tim Crow on September 11th, 2012

Tags: Beijing 2008, Default, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship consultants, Olympic Torch Relay, Olympics, Rio 2016, Rio 2016 Sponsorship, Rio 2016 Sponsorship Consultants, Sochi 2014, Socialympics, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultants, Team GB, Vancouver 2010

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There’s no doubt about it, London 2012 has been the most digitally connected Olympics we’ve ever seen. Compared to Beijing 2008 there are nearly 10 times the amount of people on Facebook and a whopping 80 times more tweeting away on Twitter.

Brands, consumers and even the stars of the greatest show on Earth participated with tweets, photos and videos, often in real time and always with real, honest to goodness, passion. It’s this real-time nature that made Social Media (‘SoMe’) transform the way we have experienced the Olympics and has held the key to brands making the most of their Olympic sponsorships.

So we at Synergy wanted to take a little look-see as to which brands best activated their campaigns through the use of content and digital channels. Whilst we were at it, we even decided to have a little medal ceremony all of our own.

Gold Medal Winner: adidas – Take the Stage

‘Take The Stage’ was the title of the integrated campaign launched by adidas to leverage its sponsorship of the 2012 Games.

Whilst television and out of home focused largely on the Team GB athletes themselves, the campaign also contained a public initiative which played out via digital channels. These channels provided the content hub to house varied material from emotionally-charged, nation-rousing videos of Ennis, Daley, and Idowu (hindsight’s a wonderful thing), to pieces on the athletes’ adoration of the Team GB kit and Stella (the designer, not the beer), even Keith Lemon interviewing the most successful British Olympian of all time, “Circus Hoy”, getting the Brownlees to Tri-a-Thong or Swingballdon with Andy Murray.

Even a medal-winner laden lip-sync music video to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” emerged from the content coffers. Add to that footage of a certain Mr Beckham surprising well-wishers in a ‘good luck’ video booth installation, and you have a piece of content that has generated 3 million views alone.

Digital channels also provided the platform for 32 youngsters to be given the opportunity to collaborate with a host of top sports people and pop stars by showcasing their own talent via YouTube.

SoMe was employed to get the public more deeply involved and engaged in the campaign. Aside from the dedicated website, consumers could engage with the brand by following updates on Facebook and Twitter, using @adidasUK and #takethestage. The ‘Take the Stage’ Facebook app invited users to create their own campaign image and mantra in the same style as the striking photographic portraits, share it with their friends and post the image within the dedicated gallery.

When it came to content, there really was something for everyone.

Some stats

- The @adidasUK Twitter following climbed by 25% with the hashtag #takethestage being mentioned 109,241 times.

- Throughout the 17 days of the Olympics, adidas’ global Facebook page increased by 202,429 fans with more than 5 times the usual amount of shares.

- The David Beckham photo booth stunt has been viewed more than 3 million times.

- The adidas Team GB “Don’t Stop Me Now” video has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.

- Adidas claims it has “already recouped” its Olympic sponsorship investment through merchandise, with further sales still to be expected.

Why Gold?

Adidas realises that sports sponsorship and social have common ground – unified by passion. The brand generously sprinkled patriotism into the mix and fed consumers’ passions by telling great stories in an ‘always on’ environment, building familiarity, likeability and trust on the way.

‘Take the Stage’ focuses on what adidas as a brand stands for and not what it sells. The content is ‘shareworthy’; so meaningful, useful or interesting to its audience that they want to share it with their own friends, families and other connections.

Ultimately, adidas’ approach to sponsorship and digital during the 2012 Games has allowed the brand to build deeper, more meaningful and more enduring relationships with its consumers.

Silver Medal Winner: P&G – Thank You Mum

Proctor and Gamble brought to life its sponsorship of the Games most effectively through its ‘Olympic Mums’ YouTube campaign. Its aim was to recognise Mums as the special person behind every athelete.

Content for the campaign took the form of a series of video tributes called “Raising an Olympian”, stories told by the Mums themselves, which were then distributed on TV and online through sponsored content and video ads.

Facebook provided the destination to share special moments between the athletes and their Mums, and also allowed consumers to thank their own Mums by uploading family photos and writing messages for them to be shared in their news feeds. Twitter provided the platform to cheer on the athletes and allowed P&G to keep its followers informed.

Some stats

- The campaign achieved over 206,397,926 impressions.

- Over 5 Million views on YouTube.

- 43 online articles were written.

- Retailers that activated the campaign with in-store displays have seen a 5% to 20% sales lift for P&G products in the three- or four-week Olympic merchandising period.

Why Silver?

The content which P&G dispersed told emotional and compelling stories, which people naturally wanted to share.

Who could resist the pull on the heartstrings, the concept of ordinary kids becoming Olympians and the contribution their own mothers made to getting them where they are today?

Using social to roll out content a full 100 days before the Olympics shows P&G’s understanding of how using its “mum-umentaries” to engage wasn’t limited to the actual Games themselves.

Using real time distribution of narratives added to the impact, exemplified by the airing of a ‘thank you’ message from one Volleyball player to her Mum halfway through the final set of the match.

A robust paid-for seeding strategy also ensured the content reached the right audience. Oh…and finally, P&G forecasts that its Olympic campaign will generate over $500 million in additional sales.

Bronze Medal Winner : Coca-Cola Move to the Beat

Coca-Cola has been involved with the Olympics since the 1928 Games in Amsterdam. In 2012 the focus moved from more traditional advertising to a more ‘Liquid and Linked’ approach to story-telling. Launching an integrated campaign, which largely played out through SoMe, Coke targeted its audience with the spotlight on music and youth culture.

Bringing in some musical ‘big guns’, Coke worked with producer Mark Ronson and singer Katy B, with Ronson setting out to produce an original Olympic anthem for 2012. To achieve this he travelled around the world to capture the sounds he needed from various sportsmen and women in action to form a ‘rhythmic backbone’, for the anthem. Imagine Ronson in the meeting with Coke selling in the idea that he needed to discover a rhythmic backbone. He captured sounds from Table Tennis in the UK, archers from Singapore, hurdlers in the US, sprinters from Russia even Taekwondo in Mexico.

Coke then told the story of Ronson’s mission through a series of videos. Users were driven to Coke’s Move to the Beat website where they could become the producer themselves and combine their favourite sport with their favourite beats to create their very own version of the anthem. If the user so desired they could further manipulate the anthem through the movement of their mobile phone via an associated app.

Coke uploaded the UGAs (User Generated Anthems) to its global community and further facilitated the sharing of these user-generated anthems through Facebook and Twitter. Users posted the videos on their Facebook profiles and propagated them via tweets.

Some stats

- 3 million user-generated anthems were created.

- Coca-Cola has now hit 50 million fans on Facebook.

Why Bronze?

Coke understands the importance of creating content which resonates with its audience, and more so, it understands that co-creating this content makes it all the more powerful. People love to share what they themselves create and Coke facilitates this. Make the content unique, valuable and easy to share, and an audience will happily amplify your brand message – and do so with a smile.

In summary, whilst the Olympic Flame may now have been extinguished for another four years, the brands above have demonstrated that they have the ability to start their own fires through the power of Social Media. By creating truly outstanding content, allowing users to put their own stamp on that content, and helping them share it via social, these brands can sit back and enjoy the warm afterglow as consumers ‘fan’ the flames on their behalf.

Full disclosure: Synergy works with the Coca-Cola Company

By Lee Thomas on September 10th, 2012

Tags: Advertising, Digital marketing, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Paralympics, Socialympics, Sponsorship, Twitter

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As the first truly social Olympic and Paralympic Games come to a close, we take a look back at the Games according to Twitter – exploring who generated the most conversation, who gained the most followers and what impact winning a medal does for your popularity in the social sphere.

Social media became such a large part of the Games for athletes, journalists and fans alike that one Australian bookmaker even went as far as to offer odds on who would gain the most Twitter followers over the course of the London 2012. If you had the foresight to put some cash on Tom Daley, rest assured you will see a nice return on your investment.

Despite Michael Phelps leaving his final Olympic Games as the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals, his gain of a ‘meagre’ 950,000 Twitter followers (an increase of 293%), was only enough to bag him a silver medal in the social media stakes. In the end  Daley took the gold, winning more than 1 million new followers over the course of the London 2012 (an increase of 275%).

Daley’s meteoric social rise was triggered by two events. The first of these sadly brings to light one of the negative aspects of the medium, when a user cruelly invoked the name of Daley’s late father after he failed to medal in the Synchronised Diving – sending Tom’s following up 300,000 to almost one million in just a couple of days, as people rallied in support. The second was Daley’s impressive bronze in the individual competition towards the end of the second week, which took the number up past 1.3 million.

There were also other significant movers across the rest of Team GB. Jessica Ennis picked up almost 500,000 new followers as she stormed her way to Heptathlon gold, while Bradley Wiggins followed his success in the Tour de France with an Olympic gold medal, picking up 230,000 fans in the process. Double gold medallist Mo Farah increased his Twitter fan base by 220,000, while Andy Murray’s gold and silver medals saw him pick up more than 100,000 new followers.

Of course, not all athletes in Team GB were members of Twitter prior to the Games; in fact, only 52.7% had active accounts before the Opening Ceremony. Incredibly, by the Closing Ceremony, 73.6% of Team GB athletes had signed up, with Jason Kenny (who didn’t have an account until 9 August) gaining nearly 30,000 followers in the two days up to the end of the Games.

So, what does a medal get you in terms of followers? Looking at a sample of 27 British medal-winning athletes, we explored the uplift in followers that an athlete gained from the Opening Ceremony up until directly after their first medal win. This averaged out at an incredible 57% per athlete. Among our sampled athletes, Anthony Ogogo led the way with an increase of 324%,  to reach more than 24,000 followers – albeit from a low base. This was  followed by Tom Daley who increased his following by 258% to over 1.3m – although as discussed there were other contributing factors to this rise. Next was Louis Smith who saw an impressive 124% increase and Ben Ainslie, who increased his following by 122% after his first medal to 22,000, which has since risen above 40,000.

According to stats released by Twitter, more than 150 million tweets were sent about the Olympics in total and perhaps unsurprisingly, diver Tom Daley topped the list of British athletes discussed on the site, with more than 1 million mentions. Overall, and again unsurprisingly, the most tweeted about athlete was Usain Bolt, with Michael Phelps second and Tom Daley and Ryan Lochte third and fourth respectively.

Despite the countless incredible sporting stories over the Games, the Great British public’s appetite for the ‘celebrity’ still burned strong, with the Spice Girls reunion somehow managing to rack up more tweets than during any of Usain Bolt’s or Mo Farah’s gold medal winning races, with a staggering 116,000 tweets per minute – or roughly 2,000 tweets per second. Although, to put this is some context, the most simultaneously tweeted-about event was the televised screening of a Japanese anime film in 2011 – Castle in the Sky – which registered 25,088 tweets in a single second. There’s no accounting for taste…

And so to Rio. With 33.3 million Twitter users and counting, Brazil currently stands 2^nd behind the United States in active Twitter users, after recently overtaking Japan. As users from across the globe, and, in particular from emerging markets, continue to flock to Twitter, Rio 2016 has the opportunity to learn lessons from London to deliver the most socially shared event to date.

By Tom Whiteside on September 10th, 2012

Tags: Brazil, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship consultants, Team GB, Twitter

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Think you know the slogans and straplines of the London 2012 sponsors and organisers? Did you even know them in the first place? Well, here’s your chance to test your knowledge – and the effectiveness of a lot of heavyweight marketing.

We’ve created this (entirely unofficial) crossword featuring the IOC, IPC and LOCOG slogans, and the campaign straplines of the Games’ global and domestic tier one sponsors.

View and download it here and test your knowledge. And if there are a lot of London 2012 experts in your office, why not challenge them to a speed test?

We defy you to complete it without Googling (especially 19 across and 22 across).

But when you do, you’ll find you have not just a completed crossword, but a London 2012 word cloud.

Enjoy.

By Tim Crow on August 30th, 2012

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, Default, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, Paralympics, Rio 2016, Sponsorship

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