Gatorade, a sponsor of Bolt but not the Games, got the party started with this fairly predictable and clichéd spot featuring the 100m-200m champion.
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“We weren’t there on double decker buses,” says a husky voice. “We were there for real, inside the bodies of some of the greatest athletes on earth.”
The message: We’re too hip to be in the establishment. It’s cool to be an outsider. The reality: Yawn. Yes you’re cool and urban, but you are piggybacking on the Olympics while doing nothing for the good of athletes, apart from one staggeringly rich one.
Rule 40 was the subject of an orchestrated campaign by dozens of US athletes during the Olympics, their identical, timed tweet reading: “I am honoured to be an Olympian, but #WeDemandChange2012.”
One of those was US 800m runner Nick Symmonds, who last year took to eBay to sell a temporary tattoo of a Twitter handle. The winning company paid him just over $11,000 and Symmonds ran in the Games with a patch on his upper arm, hiding the corporate logo. There’s no doubt he garnered more publicity for HansonDodge by not showing the rudimentary tatt than he would have if he’d been one running billboard among many.
Change is too late for 2012, of course, but this campaign will grow in intensity over the next four years, driven by the vast resources of the most prominent non-sponsor of them all Nike, and especially as the IOC and national Olympic Committees, Australia’s among them, reject the idea of paying the athletes for their participation.
The huge revenues garnered by the event in broadcast rights and ticket sales are poured back into hosting or development of programs across Olympic sporting federations and while athletes current and former make the case for payment the movement argues they are all benefitting, albeit it indirectly.
As the Australian Sports Commission, AIS and AOC come to terms with the evidence that many of our closest sporting rivals are catching up and passing us, a similar scenario is being played out on the fringes.
The Sydney Olympics was a significant moment for Australia’s reputation in the international events marketplace and our companies were in demand through the Athens Games and onto Beijing and London as well.
Eric Winton is a leader in the emergence of Australia’s global major events industry since 2000, first in a senior NSW state government position and now as private consultant for New Millennium Business. In his areas of business strategy, international marketing, project management and delivery of events, he sees Australian business under the same type of competitive pressure our athletes have felt. British firms have watched ours closely and are now set to aggressively battle us for the same contracts.
“The British have learned from Australia’s success in the international sporting events marketplace and the post-Sydney Olympics and Melbourne Commonwealth Games experience,” says Winton.
“With really clever and innovative specialists and moderate government support, Australians have established a formidable international reputation.
“The British recognise that such enterprise needs concerted and top level support to succeed and are committing substantial resources to get there. So the Games and events planning challenge is changing and we need to become even more smart.”
Of course no one is immune from change, except maybe AOC boss John Coates who declares he has the hunger to return for an eighth games in charge of Australia’s team.
The same can’t apply to Sports Minister Kate Lundy. Her enthusiastic tweeting and cheerleading from the Olympics was seen by many in Australian sporting circles as unbecoming of a person in her position, although there were would have been critics had she made her excuses and left early.
“She had to make the most of it,” said one source. “There’s no way in hell her party will be in government in a couple of years.”
You can just imagine it: as Posh, Scary, Baby, Ginger and Sporty strutted their stuff in London, a Coalition pollie – John Alexander, Cory Bernardi or maybe even the mute Opposition sports spokesman Luke Hartsuyker – had a lightbulb moment … “I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want…”
Tony Harper is editor and co-founder of Sports Business Insider website, an online resource showcasing views, news and trends for the growing Australian sportsbiz industry, and soon to start a media services division. Look out for Tony’s regular contributions as a new blogger to SmartCompany on all matters sports business-related.
