Octagon Brazil co-Managing Dirs Aykan Azar and Matthieu Fenaert -- who took over those roles in January -- are optimistic heading into the 2016 Rio Games. Following a strong showing during last summer's World Cup, when Octagon represented nine clients, including six official World Cup partners, it has named three Olympics sponsors it will represent at next year's Games. With tech firm Cisco, Brazilian beer Skol and higher learning institution Estácio already signed up, Octagon Brazil is excited as the start of the Rio Olympics draws closer. One of Octagon's many tasks involves assisting companies hoping to sponsor the Games. Because a brand must go through a bidding phase before being named a sponsor, companies often seek Octagon's help making their bids. Azar: "That's actually one of our [areas of] expertise as well. We work with a
lot of interested brands and we develop those bid books for them. ... We start before it actually starts." Azar and Fenaert recently discussed several of Brazil's biggest pros and cons as a host nation, the value of the experienced gained during last year's World Cup and the growing influence of social media and technology, among other topics.
Q:
How did perceptions of Brazil change after its successful hosting of last year’s World Cup?
Azar: If nothing else, it was a big confidence booster for the country. We all know those major events are a showcase for the countries as well. We’ve seen it in South Africa and we saw it in Germany, for example, two countries that used that opportunity to their advantage to build their image and to combat some of the negativity around these countries. Brazil is no exception. I think Brazil used its world stage to surprise a lot of people. If there were situations where brands looked at Brazil as a potential growth market, but were a bit hesitant because of some of the negative things they heard about Brazil and some of the challenges in the country, I think the World Cup would have only benefited those brands and those players to say yes. Brazil can deliver.
Q: What are some of the ways Octagon will measure its success or failure after the Games?
Azar: This is always a very specific exercise that we go through. When we look at why some of these brands engage with sponsorship and the reason they sign up, you will find that the objectives that they set out to achieve are always very different. … We sit down with these brands to find what their objectives are and then really map a full measurement plan against it. Across the board, it would be very difficult to give you an example as to what would define a successful sponsorship for our clients. You look at Octagon Brazil as a whole, for the World Cup, we managed about 100,000 tickets successfully. … As it relates to our clients, it’s always very unique, always very tailor-made and sometimes also a bit confidential. But it’s fair to say when we look back at the World Cup, if you look across the nine clients, I think it’s fair to say if you spoke to any one of them, I would be surprised if any one of them said, "The World Cup was not a success for us." Whatever objectives they may have set out, we played a part in helping them achieve those goals.
Q: How do you compare the logistical challenges during the World Cup to those organizers face going into the 2016 Olympics?
Fenaert: Brazil was complicated in terms of logistics for the World Cup. They asked us to have the same quality of services in different cities. Most of our clients were doing several games in several cities, so obviously they expected the same level of services in São Paulo as in Manaus or Salvador. Definitely that brought some complexity to the event, the logistics. It’s so big that there’s no way to go by car, by bird, by train. It’s only by plane. The airports had to step up for the World Cup. The delay in planes was less than any in the rest of the years. It worked very well. When we go to the logistics of Rio, it’s a complex setup. The distances are big. It’s not like in London, where there were three different lines of subway to reach the Olympic Park. It’s something that we’re already planning.
Azar: What’s interesting here, from the World Cup going into the Olympics, is the completely different set of challenges that we find. I would almost go so far as to say they really are at the very different ends of each spectrum. First you have one of the most decentralized events ever in one of the biggest countries in the world, across 12 cities, and mobility and connectivity is a big issue. Then you go back to one of the most centralized events that you will find on this planet with the Olympic Games. You come to a city like Rio where on any given day during the high season, there’s a shortage of hotel rooms. Now you’re bringing the biggest global event in the world to that city. We’ve already seen that there’s going to be a shortage of hotel rooms. We spoke about mobility, the need for the city to upscale the urban mobility systems. There’s a challenge here as well. If you came here today, Rio is not the most mobile city you will find in the world. We could go on and on, but it’s those two different sets of challenges, which are very unique and very different, which really require the local expertise that we bring to the party in helping our clients say, “OK, here’s what you’re faced with and here’s some of the solutions that we could bring to the party.”
Fenaert: At the same time, clients also understand that the dynamic is very different. … [For the World Cup] the only venue where they had to go was the Maracanã, which was really straightforward, 40 minutes to one hour and 30, depending on traffic. Now they understand that at some point, their clients may be watching a beach volleyball game in the morning in Copacabana and will have to cross the entire city to see the U.S. basketball team playing at night in Barra at the Olympic Park.
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Octagon Brazil Co-Managing Dir Aykan Azar
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Q: How will hosting the World Cup and Olympics spur Brazil’s growth as a sports market?
Azar: If you take a macro look at the sports marketing and sponsorship industry in Brazil, I think it’s no secret when I say that Brazil is not as mature of a market as the U.S. or maybe Europe is. That growth is lagging a little bit behind. It would be fair to say Brazil probably is where the U.S. was maybe 10, 15 or 20 years ago. But it’s great to see that growth and to see how these two major events in particular, the World Cup and the Olympics, really speed up that process and really serve as a catalyst for the industry. You can see it in all areas of the industry, how people become more savvy, get trained up and become more professional as it relates to agencies like ourselves, the federations, the organizing committees, athletes, you name it. This is really great for us. People are passionate about the sports industry and will also look beyond 2016, it’s a really great thing to see. This will only continue. I think the Olympics will play a part in that as well.
Q: How does the passion of Brazilian sports fans compare to what you have seen in other markets?
Azar: We are in the passion industry. I have been around the world and I’ve been connected with the sports marketing industry for a while. It is fair to say that Brazil is arguably the most passionate country I’ve ever been to. Obviously it relates to sports and soccer in particular -- that’s not a secret -- but what’s interesting here is we see that same passion across other "passion platforms," as we call them, that are emerging. Sport is one. Entertainment and music is one that Matthieu alluded to. This is really a massive growth area. The fact of the matter is passion is immune to any recession. Passion will still be there post-2016 and this is really something that gets me personally excited about Brazil. There is a future here, and the two events will really help sort of kickstart and speed up that process down here in Brazil.
Q: In what ways have the growth of social media and technology affected the way a company markets an Olympics or World Cup?
Azar: Social media is at the forefront of almost every discussion that we have with our clients, the role that social media is playing, the way it is impacting the consumer experience, and the fast growth and development that we’ve seen in that space. There’s a tradition at the Olympics, where the IOC president at the closing ceremony, always -- regardless of how good or bad the Olympics were -- closes by saying we’ve seen the best Olympics ever in the history of the Olympic Games. I don’t know if that’s always true. But one thing is always for certain, and that’s what we’ve seen, especially over the last few Summer Olympics. We always, from major event to major event, see the most connected Games ever. What we saw in 2014 with the World Cup was unbelievable. When we look at a four-year span between events, things in that space grow exponentially. We talk about days and weeks and months in which things develop, let alone years. There are some very interesting statistics. When you look at the last Olympic Games before London, going back to Beijing, when you look at some of the potential of social media that led to 2012 and the summer Olympics, it’s actually mind-boggling. In 2008 there were no tablets in the market yet. In 2012 there were about 50-55 million. There were less than 1 million Twitter accounts in 2008, there were 300 million in 2012. Those things just show the potential and growth in that space. What was interesting for the World Cup for us, one of the issues that we face is normally in that space we’ve seen some of the sponsors and some of the brands really lead the charge in being at the forefront of consumer and fan engagement. But the job that FIFA has done with their own social media, the application, the FIFA Global Stadium, has really been very unique and has been very well received by the fans. The consumption in that space has seen significant growth.
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| Octagon Brazil Co-Managing Dir Matthieu Fenaert |
Q: What are some of the tasks Octagon is currently carrying out, a little more than a year from the Games?
Fenaert: Right now, as you can imagine, we are in the middle of a couple of pitches for Olympic sponsors. Since we are now one year out from the event, this process -- there are two pitches that we are in actually -- should be ending very soon. Even if we have a couple more, this is just for the next three months, I would say. We should have our complete roster of Olympic clients [by then]. Also, we have a lot of requests for hospitality. ... This is what takes up most of our time now, showing projects to some clients from requests that we get about identifying the venues. We are already planning all the logistics around these venues. Sometimes we need to adapt these venues in terms of structure. As you can imagine, the great structures and the great venues are very expensive, so sometimes we need to be clever and find a not-as-good venue that we can transform to be as good as another one that is more expensive.
Azar: There's a famous saying in soccer that goes, "After the game, it's before the next game." I think the same is true off the pitch as well. Especially with the first-time, or one-off sponsors, for these big events, the planning requirement is certainly much bigger than you would find for any other sponsorship in the world. That could even expand to three or four years. ... [With Cisco] it was really a seamless transition from London, when we looked at wrapping up London, evaluating what worked, what didn't work, capturing key earnings, making sure that knowledge is being transferred over to the next market and then going into the planning there. Even though four years sounds like a lot of time in between events, it really isn't for us. It really is an ongoing cycle that never ends.
