Heather Hancock – Lead Partner London 2012, Deloitte

What are your main responsibilities as the lead partner for the London games?

It’s two areas. I’m responsible for making sure when any part of the Olympic family has a requirement, I make sure which is the best solution. Have we got the right people in? Do they understand what we are already doing? Are we managing the risk? Are we managing any conflict, the Olympic family being the complex thing it is? So I take the overall view on all that. So hopefully no one comes into contact with London 2012 and gets the impression we are not joined up. I’m specifically responsible for all our secondment programme and how we manage services under our sponsorship contract.

The other half is that I’m also the accountable partner in the firm for how we activate the sponsorship. I think it’s different from lots of other sponsors for a good reasons. Our clients are not interested in the logo on the wrapping paper. They’re interested in what we’ve done. Have you really made a difference? If you are divorced from what you are doing on the ground, that would make it a little more difficult.

 

What part of your role for the 2012 Games do you enjoy most?

I absolutely love hearing what Deloitte people have done on the Games. That’s fascinating and fantastic. One guy was on the market buying 65 horses. Those quirky things through to the team who are doing all the procurement support of the Games, a more strategic point of view. I like hearing the big picture, huge-scale programme – and we’re also buying the horses. I love that.

 

Deloitte were one of the first sponsors to sign up with London 2012. Why?

We first got onboard with the bid when it was in third place. Which is not a very Deloitte thing to do. So we really believed it was going to be successful. We really wanted the sponsorship because we had, in this firm that had outstripped all its competitors, we really were motoring ahead. We had had exponential growth in the marketplace and we were looking for something that demonstrated that, a big, unusual, differentiating move.

 

Who do you think you’re trying to appeal to by sponsoring the Olympics? How can you get most out of it?

It’s definitely got a big client dimension to it. Our clients for whatever reason are going to understand the story of the Olympics in a much more accessible way than a story that feels remote from their own business experience, no matter how relevant it might be. It is hard to find a client who does not want to speak about sport to some degree. So it’s a fantastic relationship builder and a platform to display our capability.

Predating our sponsorship was a significant increase in the charity investment budget. We quite like things which might not be the sexiest thing in the world, but where you can really get involvement, not just in the running, but in skills and lending your brand and all the rest of it. Our people feel so proud of what they’re doing in disability sport. What we’re doing is as much about grassroots as it is about the medalist at the end. We had 32 participants in Beijing. So we’ve seen people come through to the top end of performance, but that wasn’t the motivation.

 

How surprised were you at Deloitte’s recent report that over two thirds of large companies in the UK companies didn’t expect the 2012 Olympics to have an impact on their business?

I was surprised it was so high. On the one hand it’s easy to see why – there are different way of thinking about it. I was more surprised by some of the detail in it. … how can you have a windfall from the Games if you’re not prepared to run for the Games? It’s very interesting when you do start to talk about Games readiness and what it might mean for their business, you can see people saying ‘I hadn’t thought about that’.

It’s a bit that it’s two years away, it’s a bit of lack of awareness, which is inevitable at this stage. We would see it as part of our contribution to the Games, helping business.

 

Who’s your favourite sports star and team?

Probably Andrew Strauss. My favourite team, can I have two? It’s school under-12 and under-14s rugby. I’ve got two sons.

 

What is your most memorable sporting event?

It has to be the weekend in Beijing – I got hoarse singing the national anthem.

 

Heather Hancock’s

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