Jean Noel Kapferer, in his comprehensive tome Strategic Brand Management, talks of brand as a conditional asset, and it’s one of his most helpful phrasings, suggesting as it does, that the value of the brand asset depends largely on what businesses do with it.
The same is of course true of sponsorship: it’s a very conditional activity – and from there the difficulty in passing judgement. There’s a trite and pretty thin argument that it’s impossible to judge a sponsorship from the outside – because you can’t know its objectives. We disagree. We’re not talking butterflies’ wings and chaos theory – for most businesses, the seasoned observer can make pretty accurate assumptions about likely objectives. In fact, in our experience, the sponsor’s strongest business case usually makes it into the launch press release.
The real reason it’s difficult to judge most sponsorships is because judgment is only possible against potential. Even sponsorships which fly in the face of business logic still, often, deliver value. Increased organisational self-belief and pride, unexpected business connections or the dissolving of internal silos, the very experience of being talked about, or of engaging with consumers on a different level, all of these are likely to happen on some level, making the experience of sponsorship positive.
In the case of the Olympics, this is doubly the case, or more. The totally immersive nature of the experience and the sense of playing a part in the national journey to the Games means that every partner will wave goodbye to London 2012 with relief, regret – and a huge sense of achievement. And to be fair, surviving the Olympics itself is a legitimate achievement and cause for celebration. Yet some businesses clearly realise more potential than others. And with respect to Olympic partnership, the potential is enormous.
Samsung has eclipsed Visa as the poster boy for Olympic partnership. In 1998, it was largely known as a Korean OEM, faceless to western consumers. Like any business success, Samsung’s rise to dominance in consumer electronics has many threads – but its emergence in global markets coincides too closely with its appearance as a TOP partner to be easily decoupled. And for every Samsung there are dozens of less well known transformational stories: VW China’s journey from state hegemony to semi-private enterprise; AMP’s accelerated transformation from mutual society to customer-centric bank; Westpac’s dramatic rehabilitation of its reputation as a pillar of Australian financial community; Heineken Greece’s integration within the Heineken group; GE’s penetration of the Chinese market.
By contrast, IBM’s crash and burn in 1996 was a rare example of visible failure. Generally, bad sponsorships are like old soldiers – they just fade away.
Having worked with six Olympic clients over the last three Games, we became fascinated by the varying ability of businesses to take full advantage of the opportunity which Olympic partnership brings. So we studied the strategies and approach of over 20 Olympic partners. The results of our client work and our research is being published in April, in a book called ‘Working the Olympics’.
There have been many take-outs, but for sponsors, the greatest is this: the scale and public visibility of the partnership are so large that its potential begins to be eroded if it’s not used to drive a corporate initiative of comparable scale. Not only that, the size of the Partnership is ultimately so large – even compared with other business programmes – that it risks exposing and even magnifying lack of leadership at the highest levels and disengaging employees.
Coca-Cola, to our mind, have evolved their use of the Games ahead of any other partner – and institutionalised – in a positive sense – the management required to optimise the relationship. Thierry Borra talks specifically of the role of the Coca-Cola central team in supporting host market management to use the Games to address large and bold strategic objectives, to produce, in his words, ‘step change’ – recognising the power of the geographical once in a lifetime opportunity to support business actions which fall outside of business as usual. How can the Vancouver Games accelerate brand re-engagement in Canada? How can the London 2012 Games help address negative perception of a category under attack? Coca-Cola’s partnership is moulded afresh with each Games, emerging directly from local business strategy. For Coca-Cola, the Games are, very consciously, a tool – a roving focal point for organisational improvement and renewal.
Changing the game, Games by Games.
From that perspective, judgment of Olympic sponsorship is easy: if it’s not transformational, something’s wrong organisationally.