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Visa on its Vancouver Strategy
Interesting short video featuring Visa’s CMO, Antonio Lucio, talking about Visa’s strategy in Vancouver and the prospects for 2012. Some of the interesting things he points out:
- The brand is pursuing an athlete centred strategy to communicate its association with the Games
- Visa benefits from 20 years of global sponsorships that allows it to closely track the impact of featuring Olympics-related themes in its advertising on business performance
- It takes a fairly cautious approach, focusing on benefits and promotions
- Go World specifically tells stories to help lift and inspire people, amidst gloomy economic conditions
With thanks to the blog sportsmarketing.fr
Vancouver has less than one month to go until its edition of the Winter Games gets underway (24 days at the time of typing), and so momentum is gathering in terms of Olympic related advertising and marketing.
A small snapshot of some of the activity that we’ve already monitored at Xtreme include;
IOC partner Coca-Cola is launching a campaign in the US featuring limited edition cans (no surprises there) and integrating its loyalty/rewards programme, mycokerewards.com
Another IOC partner, Visa, has stuck by its ‘Go World’ campaign that it served in 2008, with a more icey veneer but a still warm Morgan Freeman voice over (something that has won a – very small – army of fans on facebook)
Switzerland Olympic Team partner Swisscom taking a somewhat increasingly common creative approach (adidas / Halifax) to ride participants to the tournament on a wave of people
Guerilla activity is also alive and well, as this advert from Subway with their seemingly redeemed wonderboy Michael Phelps swimming his way through bricks and mortar to Canada would seem to suggest. In Canada itself, yoga apparel brand Lululemon is courting significant controversy with the launch of a clothing line named “Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 and 2011 Edition” and by offering free yoga lessons over the course of the event.
Over the coming weeks we’ll keep the blog updated with some of the eye-catching creative work of brands for the Games that crops up on the Xtreme Information service.
If you’ve any thoughts about what you’ve seen so far, please feel free to comment below…
Will Coke’s use of mycokerewards.com help it to fend off any ambush activity from the likes of Pepsi?
Can summer sports stars in any way offer a route to Winter Olympic relevance?
Another in our series of 12 Trends for 2012, looks at how some brands are investing in specific Olympic sports to create cut-through and build equity.
At this week’s Battle of Big Thinking, an event created by Campaign Magazine and the APG (this edition was the fourth), Andrew Hogan of British Gas told the attendees about his company’s recent moves to support swimming in Britain.
Whilst the Olympics weren’t directly referenced in his speech, it’s undoubtedly no coincidence that the 2008 Games not only saw the swimming team better its target set by UK Sport by winning six medals, but aso witnessed the birth of a new ‘national treasure’ in double gold medal winner Rebecca Adlington.
As a non-sponsor of LOCOG, British Gas stands nonetheless to benefit from the rising profile of the sport through its Olympic successes. Capitalising on the potential and future expectation for 2012, the former national energy supplier is now the principal sponsor of British Swimming, a partnership which sees the company involved in both professional and grassroots initiatives (the deal is said to be worth £15 million over six years). During his presentation, Hogan spoke proudly of the brand’s investment in ‘pop-up pools‘, an initiative designed to help schools that can’t afford to bus children to and from local pools with the opportunity to provide pupils with a swimming experience (swimming is part of the national curriculum).
Ten schools nationwide benefited from a pop up pool in 2009 – a number that might leave you feeling underwhelmed given the coverage that has been generated. But it does demonstrate the power of creative and inclusive grassroots initiatives (especially those that can highlight apparent shortcomings in public policy).
Hoy and Pendleton
Similarly, Sky (which is also not a LOCOG sponsor) is a sponsor of British Cycling, leveraging the ongoing successes (from the likes of Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton) in the velodrome and on the streets. Its logo now adorns the national colours of British cyclists at UCI events, whilst like British Gas it has taken activity to ‘grassroots’ levels with its well known city centre ‘Skyrides‘.
Building equity in these two sports that offer potential and (vitally) personality has provided a route for these two brands to piggy-back Olympic success, whilst also avoiding clutter. Their challenge now is to continue to build and then maintain the momentum for when summer 2012 arrives.
BMW is the latest LOCOG partner, ticking the box for the automotive sector in London’s sponsorship line-up.
How will BMW inject ‘Joy’ in to London 2012 with its creative strategy?
The deal, announced on Wednesday allows the BMW Group to leverage its sponsorship through the BMW, Mini and BMW Motorcycle brands. As was seen in China with BOCOG partners Volkswagen, the deal will see BMW hand over a fleet of over 4,000 vehicles to help athletes, officials and media get around the city.
Volkswagen supported its activity with phased rollouts of the cars, stealing PR opportunities along the way. These included a special ‘green fleet‘ for the media centre that aimed to help support the Beijing edition’s positioning as the ‘Green Games’. Also popular was a fleet of specially design Beetles, that sported colourful bodies embracing Chinese culture and tradition. There was also a special fleet rolled out for the Olympic Torch Relay.
So BMW won’t be short of opportunities to create touchpoints throughout the build up to the Games. However, it’s not all plain sailing as an official sponsor. In 2012, BMW will have to be prepared to take some of its own medicine from competitor brands – in 2008 it was responsible from one of the most eye catching guerilla campaigns when it created a fleet of popular Mini Clubman rickshaws to ferry tourists around the city.
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