For London 2012 a marketing firm is both service provider and client
COUNTDOWN TO THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES
72 DAYS TO GO
Q What was your brand’s primary reason for being involved with the Games?
A The task of marketing the London Olympic Games has been described as the biggest assignment in UK marketing history. For a group of agencies to collectively and collaboratively be able to nail that is the most extraordinary platform to show what we do, frankly from soup to nuts in the marketing context. Lots of our competitors are very good at advertising but might not do branding, are very good at social media but might not be able to do other bits and bobs. What we want to prove is that for massive, complex assignments Worldgroup has the capability in breadth of service and depth of skill. This will give us great awareness within UK plc of that.
As well as awareness, it is a retention and recruitment tool. We work in a creative industry, and to be able to have a recruitment conversation and say to somebody “on 27 July 2012, your work might be seen by up to 4bn people” is a huge positive in a hugely competitive environment. The other thing it’s been great for, more surprisingly to me, is retention. I’ve never seen people so passionate about working on something for so long. On the teams that have worked on the Olympics over the last three and a half years, in the five or six companies that we’ve got together, no one who’s left has been intensely involved. And in this industry, locking people in for three and a half years is a long time.
The other reason is the family of sponsors you join, which gives privileged access to some of the biggest brands on the planet. Some of those we’re now working with, that we weren’t working with beforehand. Some of them, who we were working with before, we’re now working with on a whole broader range of things since our Olympic relationship.
Q How did you structure the case for involvement to the board?
A It was about showing that the benefits would outweigh the cost. In our sector, no one had ever done what we were bidding for, being a sponsor and also providing the full gamut as services in kind. And agencies are not big companies. So the sorts of sums are big for us. But we saw a long-term effect in reputation enhancement. I’ve got years of “we did that – just imagine what we could do for you”.
Q What was the hardest question or issue to reconcile in order to get board approval?
A The most difficult thing was the return on investment equations. How to give them some confidence that our hunches were right. So we did quite a lot of work on building a model and actually once that was presented, because they bought all of the other reasons, it was a relatively straightforward decision.
Also everyone was going for it, and for an American company it’s a huge feather in the cap to beat some other, very well known UK communications groups.
Q How have you structured your business to maximise Olympic opportunities?
A We had to get used to the fact we are also a client: a sponsor. For people who are used to service provision, we had to create a structure that didn’t just concentrate all our efforts on delivering what they need, we had to have other people going “well, hang on, I’ve got rights” and to make sure they were heard. So we created a very small central team, four of us, and then around each of the companies we created a team. So as not to duplicate, the central team works with all of the people who execute the disciplines. For example, I would walk into FutureBrand, the single biggest provider of marketing services for McCann Worldgroup in relation to London 2012, and we would use some of the client service people but we would use the designers directly. We would do the same with our sports marketing company, Octagon, or our events company, Jack Morton. It doesn’t duplicate roles and it also meant we didn’t have huge numbers of people on it full time for a value in kind contract. Working smartly worked for everybody, and the London organising committee loved the idea of having a core team that could stitch everything together.
We then created a separate team who didn’t have to worry about what we were delivering but were totally focused on what we are getting out of it, getting this compelling story in front of a very tight audience of potential clients in the UK.
Q What has been the employee reaction to being involved with the Olympics?
A It’s a fantastic buzz around the office. When we were able to use the London 2012 logo on our business cards, it was amazing how many people had suddenly run out because they wanted it on. It’s a massive boost to morale.
Q What advice can you give to non-official partners about this summer’s commercial opportunities?
A We do a lot of country branding, and non-sponsors should be thinking about how they can contribute to an improvement in Brand UK for every single visitor that comes to this country. You don’t have to be at the Games to make the trip a success.
Nick Sykes is managing partner of London 2012 for McCann Worldgroup.