In our research for ‘Working the Olympics’, we came across a fascinating insight into the Olympic brand. Terrence Burns, formerly of the IOC and up to recently President of Helios Partners, was sharing his experience of running the IOC’s first brand audit:
‘At the time we did the un-prompted word association research, there was only one country that associated the Olympics with winning, and that was America. However, when Beijing won the bid, ‘winning’ then became a fairly important brand attribute with Chinese consumers. The Olympics appeal to everybody in a very unique way. The Brazilians love the ideals. People can marry it to their own national identity or psyche.’
Most brand-building programmes and hierarchies we’ve ever come across focus on three brand attributes. Sometimes four, occasionally five: usually three. But this model has always stuck a little in our throats. Sure its simplicity lends itself to communication – but it also feels a tad superficial. The propaganda model, we call it.
So what struck us was the fact that a single brand could appeal to entirely different countries for entirely different reasons – that perception of the dominant brand attribute could differ so radically from one country to the next.
There’s a term in psychotherapy invented by Freud, and evolved by Jung (and others) called projection. Projection describes the universal tendency we have to attribute to others – people generally, but also to animals, objects and for that matter logos – motivations and behaviours and qualities which we deny in ourselves – good or bad. Scapegoating is the best known example of projection, but it plays out on a daily level much less obviously. Most of us, experience shows, struggle to recognise our projections – and making sense of our projections is the bread and butter of psychotherapy.
And only projection neatly explains how the Olympics can be about coming first in the US – and peaceful co-existence in Germany.
What is so interesting is that the Olympic brand derives its strength from being loosely, rather than prescriptively defined – and the Olympic model shows a number of clear departures from contemporary ‘brand management’.
- the IOC talks in terms of clusters of values, rather than single word brand pillars
- the IOC celebrates the internal contradictions and tensions between many of the values, rather than word-fudge them together
- it is product-led rather than brand-led:a false distinction of course but in the sense of the non-product manifestation of the brand
Now clearly the strength of the IOC brand is not a function of its brand model. It’s built on a 2700 year-old heritage, the status, stature and format of the Games themselves, and the fact that, to a large extent, those values are lived and real.
Nonetheless we feel there are learnings here both for sponsorship and brand modelling. Brands are still nervous about allowing consumers close. They cling to their own personal space. But as soon as you acknowledge the principle of projection, you realise that the communications challenge of enforcing a rigid brand concept runs in the face of a universal human tendency. That’s not to say the underlying brand thinking is invalid, just that a model which acknowledges and gives people greater freedom to apply their own interpretation is ultimately going to be more engaging.
What does that look like in practice? Greater visual flexibility with graphic devices (measured, not wanton). Deliberate use of multiple micro sponsorships, rather than monolithic programmes. The ability of brands to have broad interest sets, to be curious, to live with internal tensions.