After the party: Olympics ROI- Pippa Collett
October 29, 2012
For London 2012 Coca-Cola created the “Power Through” campaign for Powerade and rolled it out across 35 markets. In London, it developed a Powerade-branded Hydration Centre in the Athletes’ Village, distributing around 50,000 Powerade sports bottles to athletes – remember those blue tongues? Coca-Cola is pleased to have achieved its 10 million plastic bottle recycling target and is anticipating further brand share growth, perhaps even in double digits, to be evaluated at year end. 
Cisco is another national sponsor that will not be able to conclude its ROI assessment quickly. Like Dow, it sees sponsorship of London 2012 as paying dividends over the long term. Its investment in Cisco House, perched atop the Westfield shopping centre overlooking the Olympic Park, was designed almost exclusively as a long term business relationship builder. Phil Smith, Cisco’s UK CEO, said that the Olympics investment is “not about what we make, but what we make possible”. Cisco House’s interactive exhibits were designed to get national and international senior executives engaging around the future for their organisations and where technology might facilitate new business models and sustained growth.
LOCOG’s Official Department Store partner, John Lewis, and sister retailer Waitrose, had more immediate bottom line impact in mind. John Lewis claims its range of London 2012 merchandise was a huge success, but also benefited from increased sales in sports clothes, fashion and homewares and online sales generally. Waitrose noticed double-digit increases in sales of champagne and sparkling wine as customers celebrated Team GB’s success.
What of LOCOG’s longest-serving sponsor, Lloyds Banking Group? It signed its sponsorship deal over five years out as a platform for bringing to life its ‘For The Journey’ brand promise and feels it has delivered a triple win for the Games, the UK and the Group. Specific support for ticketing and the Torch Relay, as well as young athletes in the run up to the Games, assisted LOCOG and Team GB in putting on a great show. These, coupled with encouraging increased activity levels through National School Sport Week, improved brand advocacy with 30% of customers more likely to recommend the brand.
Of course, the Group also created metrics around customer revenue, acquisition and attrition. It achieved sufficient new-to-bank business directly from the Games partnership to at least cover the cost of its sponsorship investment.
But it’s not an entirely rosy picture. Eurostar got hammered by exchange rate fluctuations, seeing a 5% drop in revenues over the summer in spite of carrying over 30,000 extra passengers. Bookings have now resumed a more normal pattern and Eurostar is looking to leverage the increased brand awareness its enjoys from its Games sponsorship to promote its new Swiss ski services.
Games sponsors, whether national or global, enter into an Olympic investment largely with their eyes (and cheque books) open. They recognise that they need to achieve their own objectives, whether those are bottom line or balance sheet based. The Games are unique in the sponsorship lexicon – which other rights-holders are strong enough to offer so little for such significant sponsorship sums and conduct auctions for partnership slots?
Brands enter into Olympics sponsorship with a clear idea of where their returns will come from: brand enhancement, stakeholder engagement or commercial advantage. Roll on Sochi and Brazil – let’s see how TOP partners and local brands can leverage the greatest marketing platform in the world to build their brands and business.
Pippa Collett: Since gaining and MBA from Cranfield, Pippa Collett has become a leading sponsorship practitioner with an extensive client-side career at Shell, American Express and Rank Organisation. Her global sponsorship experience covers the full spectrum from Ferrari in Formula One and the Olympics to cultural projects including The Olivier Awards and The Unilever Series. She joined Sponsorship Consulting in 2006 to work with blue-chip clients such as Siemens, Standard Chartered Bank and Cisco.
As Vice-Chair of The European Sponsorship Association, Pippa has led on key aspects of the developing sponsorship agenda including authorship of ESA’s Sponsorship Assessment & Evaluation Guidelines and introducing the concept of Continuing Professional Development.
Pippa Collett’s 
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