One year on from the start of the greatest show on earth, I find myself sitting in a hotel lobby in Lusaka, Zambia, feeling a long way away from the Sainsbury’s Anniversary Games just about to start in the Olympic Stadium in East London, let alone the bell ringing by Bradley Wiggins this time last year. And yet my reason for being here is very much linked to the work that helped make last summer possible, namely the commercial sponsorship programme headed by Charlie Wijeratna that generated a little over £700m in domestic sponsorship revenue for LOCOG and which was recognised by Kantar Media with the Sport Business Achievement of the Year Award for 2011.
Earlier today, I participated in a workshop for the Zambian Amateur Athletics Association (ZAAA) to advise them how to build a sponsorship programme of their own for their showpiece events, most notably the Lusaka Marathon. Next week, I will be running a similar workshop, this time for the National Olympic Committee of Zambia (NOCZ) and all of their constituent National Federations. Whilst of vastly different scale and ambition to last summer’s festivities, the principles and processes of a sponsorship programme remain remarkably similar and I am here, with the support of International Inspiration, UK Sport, the IOC, the BOA and the Vodafone Foundation to name but a few, to pass on some of the processes and models that we used, as well as the lessons that we learnt, in the UK between 2006 and 2011.
For instance, understanding the potential sponsor’s business objectives is critical and the ‘5 C model’ that we used at LOCOG to talk about the value of sponsorship is valid no matter what the scale or territory: winning new Customers, attracting and retaining Colleagues, benefitting the Community and behaving in a Corporately responsible way, all whilst generating a return on investment for the Company, chime in any market at any time. Similarly, whilst NOCZ may not have Lord Coe to write a letter and thereby get a foot in the door with potential sponsors, they do have high profile ministers and sportspersons capable of having a similar impact locally.
These are relatively early days for sports marketing in Zambia, certainly as far as the majority of Olympic sports go, and the preponderance of football coverage and marketing mean that it will be far from straight forward to attract and retain sponsors here. That said, the Olympic Rings remain one of the most recognised brands throughout the world no matter what the affluence and literacy levels and the opportunity to exploit this asset for the good of sport in general is there to be grasped.
On that note, one thing that has struck me as especially different to my experiences with LOCOG is the apparent lack of data on which to base a coherent commercial strategy. Whilst I didn’t necessarily expect to find the wealth of data available that we had about, for instance, our brand awareness and the companies with which we were able to secure deals, I did expect to find more data about the relative size of each of the Olympic sports in Zambia, such as the number of clubs, players, referees and coaches. The seeming absence of this structure and reporting presents both a significant challenge for the marketeers here and a significant opportunity for market research companies I believe.
Which, stereotypically, mirrors the expectation that the opportunities here, in a country where income has quadrupled this millennium and yet more than half of the population are under 15, are just as noticeable as the challenges. This no doubt influenced the IOC when they made the decision to build the first Olympic Youth Development Centre in the world, opened in June 2012 by Dr Rogge himself, in Lusaka; an experiment that remains locally popular and yet unproved in its national let alone international merit.
With huge outside investment such as this and money from the Chinese, as well as DfID (currently investing £150m in human and social development in Zambia), as well as a burgeoning population, the sporting landscape here will change beyond all recognition in a short space of time. That is, providing the opportunities are seized and the challenges, such as financial transparency, overcome. A willing and increasingly affluent market awaits sponsors who can successfully align their brands with the sports that benefit from this investment and, precisely because this is a developing market, the long term benefits for such success are beyond even the scope of our relatively short term ambitions for London 2012.
This article first appeared in Inside The Games:
Tanya Cavanagh: Excellent article Mark. Great to have your expertise helping my neighbouring country!
Posted in 2013
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