Two Years and Counting.....

Two years to go. On one level it seems like only yesterday that the Annexe at Lane4 with the small TV in it was full of employees awaiting the decision. I will never, ever forget that moment when Mr Rogge read out the word ‘London’. I remember thinking all sorts of things...’will I have kids by then, it would be fantastic to be able to take them.....what on earth will this mean for Lane4, it could be hugely important...I bet Adrian is glad he went to Trafalgar Square, and I bet he doesn’t make our meeting this afternoon now!’ Many other things besides.

Two years to go and I have kids, two now, and they are very definitely coming. Conor even made it out to Beijing with my wife Claire and I. It has certainly been hugely important for Lane4. And Adrian definitely didn’t make that meeting!

From a Lane4 perspective things are really hotting up. We have a wealth of talented colleagues taking some part in 2012, whether aiming to compete – Greg Searle and Clare Strange – or in a coaching capacity – Wil James, Jeremy Cross, Dominic Mahony and Charlie Unwin. Also, Adrian will be commentating on the swimming Commonwealth Games and European Champs warming up his vocal chords for London. More details about what each of these people are up to are at http://www.lane4performance.com/Lane4-on-the-road-to-2012.html#first 

Away from the actual field of play, many of us remain involved on other levels. A group of us support a Bucks County Council, GE and Lane4 CSR initiative in local schools called Inspire Motivate Achieve. We are actively supporting the engagement and learning agenda of five sponsors on their journey to bring alive the opportunities presented by the next few years present to support meaningful change in their own organisations through their employees.

On a personal note, I have finally finished a book with my Dad which builds on some of the themes from the session I ran with Rob Clarke from London 2012 at our Lane4 Client Conference last year. This is due to be released in November.

 Two years to go. It hardly seems possible....and yet this London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games has already given me, my family and Lane4 more in terms of a legacy than I could ever have hoped for.

Sport and Community: From London 2012 to Marathontalk

Today I MC’d a European Sponsorship Association session entitled ‘Beyond 2012’ which looked at the impact that London 2012 would have on the worlds of Olympic Sponsorship, grassroots legacy in the UK and the sponsorship industry a a whole.

The event was hosted at the British Olympic Association offices, and our Reception hosted in and around Olympic torches from Games past.

We were fortunate to have a host of fantastic speakers and panellists from the likes of British Olympic Association, Lloyds TSB, Deloitte, RFU and so on. The most unique session, however, was presented by Dr Martin Yelling and Tom Williams, co-presenters of the excellent running podcast Marathontalk.

The rationale behind Marathontalk (http://www.marathontalk.com/) is not dissimilar to that of parkrun which I mentioned in this blog a few months ago. The podcast creates a sense of community and support for all levels of runner looking to share their passion with others, support that is often lacking in listeners’ daily lives. It has grown dramatically since launch in January, aiming to create the sense that ‘Even if my husband, wife, parents or children don’t understand my running interest, there are thousands out there who will’. In this way, Martin and Tom hope to inspire others to learn and progress in their running. I was left with a sense that theirs is a legacy which will sustain when the Olympic flame has long departed our shores.

This need for ‘connectivity’ relates to a lecture I attended last night given by Baroness Sue Campbell at Bucks New University. Chair of UK Sport and Youth Sports Trust (and thus leading the school and high performance sport agenda in Britain) she talked about the critical need to connect schools with clubs at a local level in driving participation in sport – removing any remaining feeling that sport beyond 16 is only for the elite and encouraging coaches to bring genuine expertise into schools. In this way, they aim to create a bridge from school to club sport in order to create a route towards sport for young adults once the worlds of timetabled PE lessons are long left behind.

London won the right to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games with a promise to inspire young people to ‘choose sport’. 'Legacy', for me, means not just choosing it once, but being supported in choosing it for life. Concepts like Marathontalk and parkrun are the future for supporting grassroots sporting participation in this country. London 2012 will not ensure they continue to do so into adulthood, but together the Youth Sports Trust and Marathontalk just might.

Facebook, Blackberry and Social Media - At Play and Work!

Last week I was Moderator of an Insights session for the European Sponsorship Association entitled, 'The New Era of Sponsorship'. We were fortunate to be joined by Vijay Solanki from Blackberry, Trevor Johnson from facebook, Thomas Godfrey from Sport England and Kieron Kilbride from Football League Interactive. It was a fascinating session which focused on the growing adoption of social and new media in sposnorship. What was clear throughout was, in the Vijay’s words,

‘social media is word of mouth on steroids’

It is also the future of marketing and sponsorship as we know it.
It has been relatively easy this far for those of us who are slightly long in the tooth in our roles to ignore the phenomenons of facebook, myspace, bebo and the like in our lives and our business. But did you know Starbucks now has 6.2m facebook fans in the world, and that it can effectively now engage with them on a personal level for free? Could you imagine how frustrating it might be for the Football Association that there are now more football clubs set up on facebook than there are registered with the Association itself? Can any of us really understand how powerful it is that British Gas can market their British Swimming Championships in Manchester to 98,000 fans of swimming in the local area at the touch of a button?

As Thomas Godfrey from Sport England shared, the majority of sport in this country is now played outside of traditional clubs. Just like the majority of music is bought outside record shops, the majority of voting decisions made without watching an official Party Political Broadcast and the majority of our news consumed outside of the 10pm broadcast and the morning paper. We no longer live a boxed-in existence.

The great irony, of course, is that for some reason in a corporate setting we somehow forget all of this. We tend to assume that mass communication without two way dialogue is appropriate, and even effective. We grumble when we see an employee on facebook at work, ignoring the fact they will likely be on e-mail in the evening. We tut when we see our employees with their ipods on while they work – ignoring the fact classical music helps them focus. We consider it a hindrance not a help.

Social media helps create tailored communication with individual audiences. It supports dialogue and debate rather than formal dictat. We could all use a little bit in our lives – at work and play.

Lane4: Our New World!

Those among you who have been on the Lane4 website in the last twenty-four hours or so might have noticed some changes. The link is here if you have not seen it. http://www.lane4performance.com/Home.html

In the central panel, you will also see a story which gives a little more  context.http://www.lane4performance.com/Lane4-extends-service-offering.html#first

Some of my veiled hints in this blog may now be making a little more sense! This is the week that Lane4 launches a broader service offer to the external market.

We have spent the last twelve months or so developing, planning and testing these ideas, encouraged along the way by clients and friends who we have bounced ideas around with. I have the responsibility of leading these business streams, which I am doing alongside my Commercial Director role. I am really enjoying the variety this brings, and fortunate to have great teams in each one of the business areas to make this possible.

The most critical part of the jigsaw has been to ensure that we can deliver the same quality in these new areas (Training, Communications and an extended Diagostics offer) that we deliver in the Consulting space. The same rigour around research-driven insight, recruitment, development, delivery quality and client service have been par for the course from the start. This doesn’t necessarily make it easy to launch a new service offer quickly into the market (we started planning these changes last August) but it will make it easier to do it right.

My favourite week on this journey so far came 3 weeks ago. In the course of the same week, we delivered the design of a performance management process to a pharmaceutical client and started to help them think through how they might land this in the business in a more engaging way (‘Diagnostics’); we kicked off the first module of a significant programme of work for a retailer with twenty cohorts in one week across the country (‘Training’); and we supported a financial services client with aligning their sponsorship to their group values (‘Communications’). We also proposed a three year plan for a sponsor of London 2012 which cuts across each area of our service offer.

Another step along the road for Lane4 as a business. It's great to finally be able to 'go live'. I'd love to hear your feedback.

Sport, Business and Change - Welcome to parkrun!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I particular enjoy writing about sport, business and how change happens. This blog covers all three.
I am spending a lot of time focusing on my running at the moment. One of the newest developments in the UK running world has been a new phenomenon which takes up the challenge of delivering sporting experience for the masses. Don't switch off if you're not a runner, because here is the real interesting bit ...the best and most initially puzzling thing about this new venture is its business model. Competing is totally free. 

This concept is called ‘parkrun’. At its heart, it is very simple. A central website and brand is essentially licensed, and no charge, to local individuals who wish to organise a 5k run in their local park. Costs are funded centrally by core sponsors – including Nike and Lucozade Sport – who are excited by the opportunity to engage with grass roots runners in cost effective and scaleable way.

I heard about parkrun from a friend and decided to enter at the last minute on the Friday afternoon before a Saturday afternoon race. After a 2 minute registration process online, I am now able to simply turn up and run a race any Saturday at one of 30 sporting locations across the UK by simply bringing along a personalised bar code. The event itself was very low key – some 130 attended, from elite club runners to those for whom this was a very first ‘race’. The bar code was read at the end to record a finish time, and I received a personalised e-mail by the end of day on the Saturday registering his finish time, finish position and pointing me back towards the parkrun website for free available photos from the event and a race report provided by the race organiser. Better service than I have had at races I have paid 20 pounds to enter.

The following Thursday a chatty, friendly parkrun newsletter arrived in my inbox – updating on the growth of the phenomenon, promoting some of the newer races, gently emphasising the need for volunteers to make the runs happen and thanking the sponsors whose funding made the events happen.
These two final elements of the jigsaw are critical to the parkrun model. Firstly, volunteers are the lifeblood of the event in order that participation can remain free to charge. An ongoing points competition between athletes rewards volunteering as well as competing. Secondly, sponsorship funds ensure that investment in the technology platform which delivers such a compelling experience can continue.

Keep an eye out for parkrun. Whether you are reading this in the US, Australia or the UK, parkrun will be coming to a green space near you, soon. When you head for a coffee after a first race and are asked how you heard about parkrun, I hope you might say 'I read about it in a semi-regular blog I enjoy reading'. Maybe you might feel able to send the felow runner who asked you the question the url for this blog. Welcome to how change happens in 2010!

http://www.parkrun.com/

Sponsorship, Employees and London 2012

This week Lane4 hosted an informal event for those clients of ours who are focused on employee engagement through sponsorship. Our session took a specific focus on the forthcoming London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It felt like a very meaningful step not only in Lane4’s journey in this space, but also the awareness of the sponsorship industry as a whole.

Three years ago 'employee engagement through sponsorship' meant, to put it simply, ‘free hats for every employee, offering tickets for the sales teams to win through incentive programmes and hospitality for key clients’. There is nothing particularly wrong with those areas of an internal activation programme, but they are scratching the surface of what is possible. The danger if this is all tha you do is that they risk disenfranchising all but the lucky few. How on earth can you hope to rationalise an £80m spend with an intelligent employee by giving them a free hat? What else might you be doing to help your employee base understand how the Games is relevant to their own daily working lives? How can the Olympics help them understand what their own organisations are all about?

Our conversation this week was focused on that final question. Very tellingly, thirty people from more than ten organisations were working it through together. Richard Lloyd – Head of Brand, People and Culture at BT talked compellingly about BT’s work in the area of cultural and behavioural change. The Games offers a metaphor for the journey BT and many other partners are on.

If this is an area you’re interested in, you might like to pop along to Sadlers Wells Theatre in London on 15th April at the Think Sponsorship event where we’ll be sharing more of the BT journey so far.

http://www.thinksponsorship.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=131

Regulation versus Common Sense!

I read with interest journalist and author Philip Whiteley's last post on regulation in British business at http://felipewh.wordpress.com/.

''The arguments over more-versus-less regulation are often not the most important ones to have, because the things that really matter are to do with leadership, workplace competence, engagement and trust''

I found myself nodding along as I read. Regulation is not the sexiest of subjects, but like it or not it increasngly effects my role every day at work. We recently moved around the structure of our office and some of us were in at the weekend moving desks around. Theoretical Health and Safety risk. We have some fabulous working Mums (and some soon to be Mums) in our office. Maternity leave requires a PhD to understand. Let alone the procurement systems that some FTSE businesses would judge a suitable first interface to put together a partnership-orientated approach to scale change!

It is not just my core Lane4 role that I feel this pressure. Wearing my European Sponsorship Association hat, European regulation of alcohol, betting and tobacco sponsorship among other areas is also a hot topic. On one level this is understandable, and yet on another my frustration is that the lobbying becomes an industry in its own right. Six years ago I spoke at a European Union conference on the subject in Brussels. It was run by a private company in a swanky hotel with chiefly European Union Member speakers and evening ''lobbying'' aplenty. There was a distinct sense that nothing at all of any importance would be discussed or debated (let alone decided), apart from which champagne was the best on the menu. 

Despite all of this I support sensible regulation in business leadership. I support it in the world of sponsorship. I particularly support it in an industry such as learning and development where no qualifications are required to call oneself a coach. However I also support common sense. Any business leader who needs to get out the small print to wrangle through a conversation about accrued holiday with a a new Mum returning to work has more fundamental issues in their organisation than the odd day of holiday. Any sporting organisation who genuinely wishes to accept a sponsorship which is ethically dubious will only erode their value in the long term. Equally any HR Director who is prepared to bring in unproven and unsupervised coaches will soon realise that the risks outweigh any potential benefits.  

I believe in regulation to help us look after the vulnerable in society and business, but I also believe that ultimately the ethical, sensible and emotionally intelligent prevail way before it is needed. Regulation in business is similar in many ways to the best negotiated commercial contracts between two organisations. It is important to have in the desk drawer as a guide, but if it ever leaves the desk drawer, it is probably too late!

Countdown to Vancouver Part II - Fundamental Challenges

If my last post painted a picture of the micro Olympic picture in Canada, I though it would be remiss of me not to try to paint the macro picture as we approached the Games.

As we sat down to breakfast on our first full day in Canada, there were two big stories on the front of the Calgary sports pages. Firstly, Brian McKeever’s extraordinary achievement in qualifying to represent Canada in Cross Country skiing at the Olympic AND Paralympic Games. This was global news at the time – and still features heavily on the BBC website. His home town? Canmore of course (see below if you have not read my last post!)http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympic_games/vancouver_2010/8428841.stm

The second story with the front page picture? Calgary Roughnecks narrowly losing to Washington Stealth 16-15 at indoor lacrosse. That just about sums up my experience of Canadian sport. Passionate about the Olympics, balanced with a taste for certain sports which have escaped the attention of most of the rest of the world.

Brian’s selection is not the only incredible story in Canada’s build-up to hosting the Games. Quite the opposite in fact. There are many other stories I encountered during my trip which verged on the surreal. Last minute challenges seem to be particularly extreme this time. For example, the Whistler skiing venue faces a challenge to create enough snow in time for competition - it has been 11 degrees and raining for much of the winter. Of course those of us in London would not be surprised with those conditions come 2012, but they are more than unusual for Whistler.

Amazingly though, a total lack of snow is not even Whistler’s biggest current challenge. Even more critical is that fact that the venue for the skiing events at the Olympics is actually going to be up for sale by Wall Street Financiers after its owners defaulted on their $1.4bn loan facility. The recession has hit this Games hard. http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/01/20/intrawest-whistler-olympics.html

Another key theme while I was in Canada was (of course) ice hockey. Along with the obsessive form checking on Team Canada’s brightest stars plying their trade in the NHL, a more serious debate was emerging as to whether the sport had crossed the line to an illegal level of violence after Calgary’s 19-year-old team captain was banned for the rest of the year for an assault on an opposing player. The question is whether the sport is viable in its current form in any socially mature (and litigious) culture.

Of course the Olympics will also cover an inordinate amount of column inches as we approach London. However hopefully they will be less fundamental issues than the financial collapse of the primary Games venue, the lack of the basic conditions necessary for competition or the unsustainable violence in our nation’s leading sport!

Not every story is a blockbuster of course. Come London I imagine we will be glad to see the following kind of stories on the front page, whereas currently they are hiding in the Olympic supplements and in the sports pages in Canada. This would mean London has escaped any larger issues. These are the kinds of stories I read over a four-day period:


• Which national legend should light the torch?

• How did the local politician put their foot in it at Day 89 of the Torch Relay?

• How are protesters likely to try to impact the Opening Ceremony Games?

• How on earth can a sponsor who signs up for the Games 4 weeks out get any value from the deal at all?

• How will companies cope with employee downtime during the Games?

• Why cannot our country fill all the spots we could have had available for x or y sport?

• Why do we need 3 Olympic mascots – and why do they look Chinese?

• Can the leading childrens clothing licensee stay solvent long enough to deliver on their responsibilities up to the Games?

• How do you put a huge vinyl overlay on a dour Vancouver building to transform it to a fully branded part of the 2010 experience?

• How quickly can the public use each facility when the Games leaves town?

• Which bars have been block booked by Corporates for the evenings in Vancouver?

• When it all boils down to it, how many gold medals will we win?

It’s been fascinating reading.

I hope the last two posts have helped to give you a sense of the kind of sentiments in a host nation just a few weeks from the lighting of the torch. It is genuinely a story of national sporting excitement, with the role of the Games as a social and economic catalyst (or threat) never far below the surface. I have many friends making the trip over for the next few weeks to soak up the lessons from Vancouver. There is much to learn and inspire amidst the challenges of being a host nation.

The Worst Kept Secret at Lane4!

The Daily Telegraph carries ‘exclusive’ news today that Greg Searle is returning to competitive rowing. He is aiming to compete at London 2012. He would be 40 years of age at the time of the rowing finals. There is also a strong chance that the final could be 20 years to the day since he won gold at Barcelona.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/rowing/6818615/Greg-Searle-on-comeback-trail-to-date-with-destiny-at-London-2012-Olympics.html

This is not quite as ‘exclusive’ news within Lane4. We have known Greg was getting back in top class shape ever since Greg romped home to victory out of the blue at the Lane4 Grand National – our 5 quarterly mile handicap running race. There is still a long way to go of course, but we know Greg well enough to know he will leave no stone unturned.

 Happily Greg will continue to work at Lane4 and with his clients as he moves along his journey – just as our Paralympian Clare Strange does. I have had the pleasure of being with Greg when he has shared his news in confidence with groups from two London 2012 sponsors. It has been fascinating to see their reactions. Although several of the individuals in the room work in and around the Olympic Games every day, the personal connection this news has created in the room was really compelling. Greg and London 2012 are already part of these organisations’ everyday working lives – Greg’s journey will bring these two elements together on a very personal level.

Sport meets business elsewhere in today’s Daily Telegraph. The header in the Business section has a shot of Tiger Woods, and reads, ‘With Friends Like Accenture…Tiger finds out the Hard Way’. The article criticises Accenture’s decision to pull out of their relationship with Tiger on the back of recent press revelations. It suggests Accenture’s investment has been spurious, and yet also that Tiger does not now deserve to be deserted. Whatever you make of the recent news, this is lazy and naive journalism. Accenture’s investment in Tiger to date has reaped Accenture massive dividends, but they are smart enough in a competitive market-place not to shout about it. They also have a brand to protect. They were right to be in the deal, and they are now right to pull out.

Modern sport at its best and worst in one edition of the Daily Telegraph. Good luck Greg - but don’t expect the same handicap in the Grand National next time mate!

HR, CIPD 2009 and the Nonsense of the Employer Brand

After the Lane4 Conference on 11th, last week I was at the CIPD Annual Conference in Manchester. I have been to the conference most years since joining Lane4 just over 5 years ago. On one level it was a little sad to see the accompanying Exhibition this year – probably around 50% of the size of the event at its height. We are definitely seeing a market-place in transition. Jim Collins was discussing ‘How the Mighty Fall’ in the plenary session. Quite.
On one level I could take consolation from the fact that there were far fewer outplacement providers than recruitment providers unlike the HR Director Event in January. However, this time recruitment solutions were mostly delivering the search process online. James Caan was sharing ideas around how to maximise your online recruitment search. Ironically for an HR exhibition, it did a good job of communicating a feeling of ‘commodity trading’ people.
Against this fairly depressing backdrop, Wil James from Lane4 did a cracking job talking through the TUI Travel (Thomson and First Choice) merger integration process with Jacky Simmonds, TUI Travel’s Group HR Director. This was anything but a transactional piece of change management, as I will come back to.
Beyond the Lane4 session, the highlight for me was probably seeing an introduction of the CIPD’s ‘Next Generation HR’ work shared by the likes of BT and Nationwide. This picks up among other things on an emerging trend towards the blending of HR and marketing functions. To quote Andrea Cartright from Nationwide

“Over the past six months you might as well have called me a marketer. I have been wholly immersed in the marketing team redeveloping what the Nationwide brand is going to look like.”

This is a much needed development which our thinking and work in the sponsorship space plays directly into.
It was ironic given this to see that the latest CIPD report published is ‘The impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on the Employer Brand’.

http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/corpstrtgy/empbrand/_impact_employer_brand_summary.htm
While I think CIPD’s approach in the Next Generation piece is laudable, personally I think the notion of creating an approach for an employer brand is complete nonsense. Your company’s brand is simply the way people (employee or customer) talk about your organisation. If the HR and Marketing Directors are doing their job well, employees and customers are able to engage in a personal dialogue with your brand. If they are doing their job excellently, this results in positive word of mouth and referral. It is simply impossible to paint a different picture for employees than customers.

To this point, in the Lane4 / TUI session Jacky talked compellingly with strong supporting data about the pride with which TUI employees (whether they originated with TUI or First Choice) now talk about their organisation to friends and family. A caring and empathetically managed change process created more external ambassadors than a thousand pieces of stilted internal communications or 30 second television ads would have done. Each business has just one brand. HR and Marketing and both its custodians. Perhaps in five years time the empty stands at the CIPD Event will be filled by Martin Sorrell from WPP and his swathe of marketing agencies.

Bolton versus British Cycling!

I recently spent a weekend in Bolton and was lucky enough to get to 2 sporting events – World Cup Cycling at Manchester Velodrome, and Bolton versus Chelsea at the Reebok Stadium. It is interesting to reflect on differences in the spectator experience.
 Cycling offered a full day’s entertainment for £15 per person. In the breaks in the cycling action I was able to walk the concourses to find 4 different food options (two of which were relatively healthy), experience four different sponsor products (one of which involving a 200m sprint on exercise bikes, and my very narrow but ultimately glorious victory against a 14-year-old!), join British Cycling, buy some gear and get some advice from a British Cycling coach as well as some free guides to cycling in the Manchester area. We even left during the intermission and popped to the ASDA next door to grab some nibbles.
Chelsea was somewhat different as an experience. We had a cracking view at Bolton, and it was a very good game (for a Chelsea supporter). The bar and betting shop in the stand was in full flow before the game and during it. My only real exposure to sponsor product was the smartly-done advertising in the toilets and the betting stand itself run by Bolton’s shirt sponsor. The television screens showed highlights at half time – but only of the highlights of Bolton’s best chances. The stadium was only three quarters full at the beginning, and half full at the final whistle.
The intent of this post is not simply to criticise football as a spectator sport. The experience at Bolton was absolutely what I would expect from a relatively modest Premier League ground where ticket revenues are only one part of the economic model, far behind domestic and international TV rights. Equally, the World Cup Cycling was exactly what I would expect from a sport on the up three years out from the Olympic Games where participation is the key to sustained success in the UK beyond 2012. The point, though, is that only once this weekend did I feel valued as a customer.
On the same weekend, UK Sport announced there would be a world class sporting event in the UK every two weeks between now and the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This is the window for British spectator sporting interest to broaden out beyond football. Based on this weekend’s experience, I think there is a real chance of this happening. Not once did anyone at Bolton thank me for coming.
If I had another spare weekend in Manchester, I would be taking my young son to another cycling meet rather than one of the 5 local football teams. It would cost me less to do this than buy two half time burgers at the football. I wonder whether it is a sign of the times that I saw ticket touts at the cycling, but not the football!

Sponsorship - a Mid LIfe Crisis?

We are thick in the midst of sponsorship conference season. There’s an interesting debate brewing. Patrick Nally, one the most influentical figures in the growth of sports marketing, has suggested that sponsorship is entering a ‘mid life crisis’. His rationale is that the big bucks global media rights and tickets deals beloved of rights holders are increasingly redundant. To paraphrase - consumers know the rights have been bought at great expense. A pitch side billboard does nothing for me, nothing for the community, nothing for my daily working life, and certainly nothing for my propensity to purchase. It is irrelevant to me. The consumer will no longer pay a price premium just because a brand has decided to give $50m to UEFA.

Think about the private equity analogy again. When private equity professionals are buying businesses, they are looking for return over the next 4 years. The seller is regularly fairly aware of the value it currently holds. It is probably over-charging for it. The buyer will only pay the price if there are some extra areas, some newer streams of value they can see. Or if they can deliver value from the ‘regular’ stream more efficiently. That’s exactly where sponsorship sits at the end of 2009.

There is a way forward, because the newer sources of value do exist. Nally cites Coca-Cola as an example of a brand which as managed to emotionalise its FIFA and global Olympic connections in ways which makes sense. He is right. Sponsorship is a bridge to various stakeholder groups – consumers, trade partners, employees, government. All of these can be emotionalised to drive real, quantifiable value.

The current challenge is that the majority of the sponsorship industry has not grasped that the rules of the game have changed. All of sudden, rights owners cannot over-inflate the value of their traditional packages. I am sorry, but World Cup Final tickets are not ‘money can’t buy’ because I can buy them on seatwave. Those who are not prepared to challenge their operating model, and the ways they support their partners (not sponsors) in emotionalising their connection will be in trouble.

It’s less a case of mid-life crisis than a troubled late adolescence. Often one big event turns adolescent to adult. This often involves demonstrating that there is a ‘real world’ out there which is harder, tougher, and less tolerant than the heady teenage years. Let’s hope the recession is that one thing for the world of sponsorship, and the industry is able to respond.

6 Days to Go....

I did an interview this week with the Chicago business press in advance of the IOC decision. It's for a supplement to run (and only run) if Jacques gives them the nod. It felt strange to be debating whether Chicago could reach the $1.3bn sponsorship revenue they're expected to generate from the sponsorship.. it wasn't that long ago I was answering the same question for London!

My view? Irrespective of the economy Chicago can hit the number. However they will need to recognise from the start that London 2012 has changed the world of sponsorship for good. LOCOG have done a very good job thus far in a tough market.

I imagine domestic sponsorship for a Chicago Games will be a $80m - $150m corporate investment, with a need to pay back over 4-6 years. That's not a marketing investment figure in this market. Potential sponsors will be using the same disciplines as if they were buying a company of that size. It's not a world of viewing figures, it's a world of business models - revenue growth and cost savings, discounted cash flows. In many ways its the world of a venture capitalist - can I turn this asset around to generate a return over 4 years. LOCOG has been successful thus far because they have recognised that very early on. As it stands, in my view the US marketing industry is not set up to cope in the same way.