Having just returned from two weeks at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, I’m still catching up with my UK reading. So it was that I turned last night to the February 10 edition of Marketing magazine, and an article on sponsorship by one of my favourite columnists, Mark Ritson, on which I really have to comment. Here’s why.

In his characteristically forthright style, Mark lambasts the sponsorship industry in general and a number of people in particular for predicting that Tiger Woods’ travails would not damage his image and endorsement deals:

‘Then there was the scandalous inability of an array of experts to predict correctly the impact of Woods’ misdeeds on his sponsorship deals…If ever we needed proof that most pundits in the world of sports sponsorship and celebrity endorsements are buffoons, here it was, in spades. This is one thing they are supposed to know about, and they managed to be 100% incorrect in the assessments. Not just wrong, but dead wrong.’

I’m not about to defend the industry, or the people Mark names and shames. What I am here to do is point out that Synergy did call the Tiger situation correctly. On December 12 last year, the day after  Tiger announced he was taking an indefinite break from golf, I made the following post on Twitter:

‘Tiger’s move will play well in the media. It also makes it easier for his sponsors to quit – or to stay. Most will quit: Nike will stay.’

Time has of course proved me right. I’m not sure whether Mark is on Twitter – and if you want to follow me Mark, you’ll find me there as @synergytim, along with numerous other Synergists – but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he had Synergy in mind when he said ‘most’ – ie not all – pundits called the Tiger situation wrong!

By Tim Crow on February 25th, 2010

Tags: Golf , Sponsorship , Sponsorship consultancy , Synergy , Tiger Woods

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I’ve been with Synergy clients and colleagues here in Vancouver for over a week now taking in the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. This is the seventh Games I’ve attended, and as always it’s been a fascinating experience, but this time with a heightened sense of importance and uniqueness, because we’ll be applying the insights we develop here for our clients to their London 2012 sponsorship strategies.

With this in mind, here are a just a few examples of how the Olympics has played out here in Vancouver and Canada, with some thoughts on the associated implications for London 2012.

1. The Weather

This has of course been a major theme in the Vancouver 2010 story, both around the world and here in Canada, with the effects of one of the warmest winters ever in BC impacting heavily on the events in Whistler and Cypress Mountain. But it’s been less of an issue here than you might expect, because so many major events – in particular ice hockey, of which more later – are being staged in indoor venues in the Vancouver metropolitan area.

Whilst the weather is of course a much less critical factor in the summer Games than in the winter edition, there’s no doubt that a wet summer in two years’ time – and let’s face it, a wet summer is hardly a rare event in the UK – would have a major effect on the overall image and experience of London 2012.

2. Olympic Scepticism

Vancouverite scepticism is not getting in the way of the party, but it’s always there in the background. Games-time has brought with it a huge surge of excitement and celebration, but there is a palpable undercurrent of scepticism about the effects and benefits of the Olympics here. It’s characterised by what Vancouverites would be the first to admit is their opinionated mindset, and framed by Canada’s proud tradition of free speech. I’ve experienced it every day, face-to-face, in the news and in social media, across a wide spectrum of topics, such as Government policy, the economy, tax, house prices, and travel disruption.

Recognise any similarities with the UK?

3. The Opening Ceremony

Fuelled by a tidal wave of rumours and a surprising lack of leaks from inside the dress rehearsals, last week everybody here was talking about the opening ceremony, in particular who would perform (apart from Rush, most of the rumours I heard turned out to be true) and who would light the Olympic flame (who else could it have been but Wayne Gretzky). The post-ceremony debate was equally fascinating. Whilst the consensus was “brilliant show” (and it was – the minor technical problems did not detract at all) there was also a significant debate about to what extent the ceremony truly represented Canada.

We’ll see exactly the same things happen in the UK around the London 2012 opening ceremony: indeed if anything, the pre-show rumours and the post-show debate will be even more intense.

4. Bad Luck, or Bad Games?

Although every Games has its problems, Vancouver 2010 has of course already had more than its fair share. They have ranged from the unfortunate to the tragic and – depending on your point of view – resulted from either misadventure or mismanagement. Inevitably this has become a major media theme worldwide, with the most strident criticism of IOC and VANOC coming from the UK, as well as some early – some would say too early – comments by UK journalists that this is ‘the worst Games ever.’

The Canadian media and Canadian consumers aren’t denying that there are problems – quite the reverse. But it’s hardly surprising that many have reacted furiously to some of the more extreme criticism from the UK. If London 2012 comes in for similar criticism from another country’s media, we’ll see exactly the same reaction in the UK.

5. In Canada, It’s All About Ice Hockey

Ice Hockey – just ‘Hockey’ here – is king in Canada. Think football in the UK, cricket in India or gridiron in the USA in terms of its dominant popularity. And so it follows that for Canada, this games is going to be defined by whether or not Canada wins the hockey gold medal. Of course, every Canadian success is going to be a cause for national celebration, as it was when Alex Bilodeau won Canada’s first-ever gold medal on home soil – an occasion I was lucky enough to witness at first hand – in the freestyle skiing moguls. But hockey is what really matters. So it was that on Tuesday night, after Canada beat Norway, the energy and noise in the streets and the bars of Vancouver went way up, to the levels we see in the UK when England play a big FIFA World Cup or UEFA Euro match.

Will London 2012 be different in the UK? Yes and no. We’ll see, I’m sure, huge support for all of Britain’s athletes, and national celebrations when a gold medal is won, particularly in the blue riband events. But although medal success will definitely be a key measure of how UK consumers judge the success of the Games, the focus will be spread across most of the Olympic sports rather than just one.

By Tim Crow on February 18th, 2010

Tags: London 2012 , London 2012 sponsorship , London 2012 sponsorship consultants , Olympic sponsorship , Olympic sponsorship consultants , Olympics , Vancouver 2010

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Whilst browsing Twitter last night, I came across an interesting survey, via @mediaguardian, on journalists’ treatment of social media as a source. The US survey conducted by Cision and The George Washington University is based on responses from 371 journalists, almost half of which have spent over 20 years working in the industry. It reports that 56% of reporters and editors believe social media is important for reporting and producing their stories and cites blogs as the major source with networking sites like Twitter and Facebook in second place.

The inclusion of user generated content, from YouTube, to substantiate media reports has become an established practice – highlighted so evidently through the use of bystanders’ videos of the police assault on Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protest. However, the use of information taken from other social media sites seems to be moving things forward a stage.

Predictably, of the journalists that acknowledged using social media as a source, the vast majority (84%) admitted that they treat the information taken from these sites as more cautious and less reliable than traditional media. Whilst on first reading that might seem sensible, surely this depends on the context in which they are planning to use the information taken from the ‘source’.

I’m not sure that anyone that regularly contributes to blogs or social networking sites would propose that their daily tweets and posts be considered as ‘fact’. In contrast, I would suggest that the purpose of consulting social media should be to add colour to a report by drawing on different people’s opinions to shed light on any given subject, rather than providing the ‘facts’ themselves.

From my own experience in PR, I can happily admit to being a source for a journalist on more than one occasion via Twitter. From a combination of my own posts about the projects I’m working on and following a number of relevant journalists, I’ve managed to set up a number of stories in press. Rather than the content of posts being used as content, they instead highlighted a common interest and shared goal which made me the source. Certainly from my world, social media is becoming an increasingly effective and common way of communicating with journalists.

My advice to the 46% of journalists that don’t consider social media to be important in their line of work would be to give it a go. It won’t tread on the toes of your reliable, traditional sources, but it might just provide you with access to additional resources, colour and opinion than the ‘facts’ on their own could offer.

By Kelly Russell on February 16th, 2010

Tags: Blogging , Public relations , Social Media , YouTube

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The King of the World is dead, long live the King of the World.

You have to hand it to James Cameron: at $1.88billion in takings to date, his 3D epic Avatar is officially the biggest box office ticket of all time. And having taken only six weeks to eclipse the record set by Titanic, JC’s last feature film, this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, the world and his wife (and their three children, plus extended circle of friends) have queued up at cinemas to see Avatar: whilst it’s not perhaps a film for everybody, it has nonetheless garnered some strong reviews, and, 3D effects aside, features some of the best CGI ever used in medium. The spectacle in 3D, however, elevates Avatar beyond movie to experience, drawing the audience into Cameron’s alien world of Pandora without simply resorting to the customary “oh, that was the 3D bit” camera pans. Not all 3D films can claim to do the same.

Avatar is a 3D success because the extra something this technology brings makes us believe it more, enriching the immersion and further suspending disbelief. The question is, how to monetise this on a more regular basis, as opposed to only once every 15 years, when Mr Cameron decides to take us one step beyond?

Naturally, the answer came in the form of the ever-inventive Sky, with Sky Sports’ first foray into 3D programming the live coverage of Arsenal vs Manchester United last weekend. For those lucky enough to be in one of the nine bars across the UK to feature 3D screens – well, if you’d call ‘lucky’ being reciprocally filmed by Sky Sports looking like the rejects from a Buddy Holly casting session – the experience was mixed. The customary Sky Sports graphics, player line-ups (where a sense of depth and perspective is inherent to the camera view) and wide angle shots from behind goal were suitably impressive; however, the third dimension was not the totally eye-popping revolution many were imagining.

To be fair, Sky does spoil the viewer: with up to 20 cameras tracking the game in regular Ds and lovely High Definition crispness for those willing to pay an extra tenner a month – it’s hard to say whether the final spectacle of 3D could ever match up to our expectations. It’s no massive surprise that this was basically a glorified experiment by the broadcaster – football may not be the ultimate sport to benefit from an extra dimension, versus, say boxing, rugby, or even golf – but the fanfare of such a world’s first certainly captured the public’s imagination, leaving viewers hungry, or at least peckish, for more.

Whatever the future holds for in-home 3D, it’s clear that from a sporting perspective, as James Cameron understands, the extra dimension needs to add something to our experience, to give something back, with Sunday’s experiment representing a small step in furthering Sky’s opinion on exactly how it plans to achieve this.

By Jonathan Izzard on February 2nd, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League , Branded content , Broadcast sponsorship , Experiential marketing , Football , Football Sponsorship , Manchester United , Media , Sport , Television , Television audiences

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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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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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