Where is the boundary between communal and rightsholder IP?
This interview was first published in ‘Working the Olympics’. This interview tracks Jim’s experience of Scotia Bank sponsorship through Vancouver 2010. Ambush marketing was not his intention : rather, to explore the boundaries of rightsholder and communal IP.
Jim Tobin, now retired, was Director and Head of Canadian sponsorships at Scotiabank for 12 years, having led the Bank from relative inactivity and low brand awareness to a leading position amongst financial institutions in sponsorship, with a focus on hockey and key arts and culture properties. Jim joined Scotiabank in 1995 having worked for several advertising agencies since 1970.
“Around 2006 Scotiabank had made a strategic decision to align sponsorship in support of their mass market advertising, to drive brand awareness throughout Canada and to help differentiate us from the rest of the main banks.
Banking in Canada is a highly commoditised sector and the main five national banks are perceived as pretty much a vanilla style service, with the same products, services and programmes. We believed sponsorship is unique from all other forms of marketing communications in its ability to establish both brand relevance and a deep engagement with existing and prospective customers. All the banks are involved in sponsorship of course, but not aligned to a mass marketing strategy as we came to be. That isn’t so unique now – but it was at the time, and we certainly took a very aggressive position around acquiring sponsorship properties.
RBC had a long history of supporting the Canadian Olympic Committee and had an option on the sponsorship of the 2010 Winter Olympics. It’s difficult to answer but realistically I’m not sure we’d have looked at it, given the chance. The Olympic Games is such a vast property it’s difficult to gain real brand association or awareness without a narrow focus on some aspects. And in terms of the cost structure of the Games, RBC could outspend us 3:1 in marketing dollars.
From 2007 all our marketing communications, including sponsorship, were anchored around the positioning statement, ‘You’re richer than you think’ – which gave us great scope, not just in financial terms but in consumers’ personal lives, because they applied it to the spiritual and emotional side of their lives – a real benefit for sponsorship. And that’s where we were positioning our sponsorships, as giving back to communities, and engaging in things people are passionate about.
We were working broadly on that platform when we came up with the ‘Show your colours’ concept. We had tested it in October/November around the Grey Cup, which is the finale of the Canadian football season. The Grey Cup is an iconic segment and symbol for Canadians, a highly charged national celebration and in terms of viewers the largest sporting event in Canada with a real heritage – now 99 years old, so much older than the Superbowl. We’d been the Official Bank to the Canadian Football Association and sponsors of the Grey Cup for six years. We tested the concept and found a strong resonance with sports – but wanted to take it beyond sports into arts and culture. The preliminary research showed that consumers felt this was a natural extension of our positioning. So we decided to launch a ‘Show your colours’ call to Canadian national pride around Vancouver, as a demonstration of corporate citizenship during this important time for Canada and with the intention of not ‘going dark’ from a marketing perspective.
We were working broadly on that platform when we came up with the ‘Show your colours’ concept. We had tested it in October/November around the Grey Cup, which is the finale of the Canadian football season. The Grey Cup is an iconic segment and symbol for Canadians, a highly charged national celebration and in terms of viewers the largest sporting event in Canada with a real heritage – now 99 years old, so much older than the Superbowl. We’d been the Official Bank to the Canadian Football Association and sponsors of the Grey Cup for six years. We tested the concept and found a strong resonance with sports – but wanted to take it beyond sports into arts and culture. The preliminary research showed that consumers felt this was a natural extension of our positioning. So we decided to launch a ‘Show your colours’ call to Canadian national pride around Vancouver, as a demonstration of corporate citizenship during this important time for Canada and with the intention of not ‘going dark’ from a marketing perspective.
Implicit marketing - or an appropriate response?
We were particularly careful to work within the guidelines from VANOC, but we soon received a communication from them to the effect that we were engaging in implicit marketing. They argued that the cumulative effect of our programme would lead the public to believe we were sponsors of the Games – and asked us to cancel the programme. We’d been particularly careful to work within their official legal guidelines so we felt the request to cancel was excessive. For us, the debate really centred on whether VANOC could claim ownership of Canadian pride.
We conducted polls which showed massive support for our position, which surprised us, given that the public was voting against VANOC in favour of a bank. But VANOC had done a few things to alienate the public – they’d gone after a mom and pop operation in Vancouver, for example, who called themselves Olympic Pizza, and a few other silly examples.
It was a constructive dialogue. VANOC had a job to do and that’s to protect their sponsors’ rights, On the other hand, we were confident in our legal position and felt that theirs wasn’t strong… but they appealed to our sense of fair play really. We’re a somewhat conservative organisation – we always want to be sure we’re doing the right thing for customers and staff, and we were very clear we did not want to step over the line and piggyback the Games. On the other hand, neither were we prepared to go dark during a time of great national and international interest and focus on Canada. So we did comply with some of their requests – we adapted wording, changed some executions and took away reference to the timing – and ended up reaching an agreement which enabled us to extend the running time of the campaign.
A nasty whiff of private enterprise?
A number of academics in the field came out to say there’s nothing wrong with ambush marketing, as long as you work within accepted boundaries – and there was a bit of media attention. One journalist seemed to summarise the prevailing feeling with a line which went something like: ‘We have no pony in this race… but if we don’t have the right to celebrate our national pride as we want … this has a nasty whiff of private enterprise trying to privatise public pride’.
Organising Committees have a job to protect sponsors’ rights, but when sponsors purchase the right to a property, they don’t purchase the right to force their competitors to do nothing – which would be a poor response in the context of the Olympics. The clamour for more legislation for property rights on the other hand is a sad, and I believe dangerous road to go down… where does that leave comparison advertising, for example? And, as an observation, this new style legislation has never actually been tested in the courts.
‘Show your colours’ was extremely successful for us. We have maintained our position as the ‘most visible’ bank in Canada. In 2006 we were a distant fifth in terms of brand awareness. Today our brand awareness scores place us first and we are very satisfied with our scores on ‘propensity to consider’ and consumer opinion of our brand. Nobody buys a mortgage because you sponsor a property but if you’re not on consumers’ radar for their next financial purchase, then you have a business problem. Sponsorship put us firmly in the race.”
Jim Tobin’s experience neatly explores the very real issues facing non-partners of the Games. Deliberate ambush marketing or copyright infringement is certainly not a route – but what obligation is there for brands to ‘go dark’ for the duration? Scotia Bank comes closest in our experience to what we’d describe as a strategic response : not just advertising but a fully rounded, integrated campaign. For more on sponsorship ambush, see here and here.