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On The Ground in Rio

Bridgestone moves fast, learns fast at first Games

After running major hospitality programs at the Super Bowl, the Bridgestone Invitational and the Indianapolis 500, Phil Pacsi would like to think he’s something of a sports marketing expert. But then Bridgestone’s vice president of sports and events tried the Olympics and realized how much he still has to learn.

During a walk around the Olympic Golf Course on a pristine Brazilian winter day during the Rio Games, Pacsi spoke of the extraordinary challenges presented by his company’s sponsorship of the International Olympic Committee, Bridgestone’s first worldwide program.

“Oh yeah, we’ve had some lessons learned,” Pacsi said, his good cheer belying his exhaustion. A hole earlier, he said: “An executive I was with earlier told me this is just like being at the Super Bowl, except it happens every day for 17 days straight, and that’s a perfect way to put it.”

Bridgestone signed a 10-year rights deal with the Olympics for a reported $344 million in 2014. It is aggressively leveraging what its executives call the company’s “first truly worldwide platform,” running heavy TV advertisements during the Games and blanketing Rio with billboards. In Rio, it signed a deal to become the startup Olympic Channel’s first advertiser in what executives described as a “significant” additional buy.

Bridgestone’s Phil Pacsi: “Oh, yeah, we’ve had some lessons learned.”
Photo by: BEN FISCHER / STAFF

Pacsi was at the center of it all. Bridge-stone Americas led the tire maker’s inaugural Olympic global hospitality program, five cycles of 60 to 70 corporate guests each over the course of the Games, precisely timed in a culture where precise scheduling isn’t well-received.

That Saturday, Pacsi played another role, one familiar to substitute teachers everywhere: Teaching from the book he himself just read. He was leading a 16-hour “observer program” designed for 25 Bridgestone executives from around the world, designed to teach them how the Olympics-Bridgestone partnership works.

“They’re getting my learnings since July 2015,” he joked.

His guests won’t have much time to digest it all. For now, Bridgestone is activating its Olympic rights only in four markets — the U.S., Brazil, Japan and Korea. But on Jan. 1, its rights expand into 151 other markets. The 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games are less than 18 months away, and important decisions have to be made within weeks of returning from Brazil.

Excessive ambition

The day started at 7:30 a.m. with a long trip to a suburban Bridgestone retailer, followed by a tour of the company’s thorough out-of-home Olympics presence in Rio.

Around noon, they gathered in Bridge-stone’s hospitality tent on the 18th fairway at the Olympic Golf Course, where veteran Olympic marketers such as Visa’s Brice McKeever shared their ideas. Senior marketing officials such as Mitch Poll, U.S. Olympic Committee managing director of marketing, and the IOC’s Ben Seeley stopped in as well. Meanwhile, more routine requests worked their way to Pacsi: Matt Kuchar’s wife Sybi needed a hospitality ticket, for instance.

After the third round ended, the group traveled an hour back to Copacabana, where they toured NBC’s Olympic set, had dinner and ended with a late-night beach volleyball match.

Meanwhile, Pacsi was overseeing the ongoing hospitality program based in the Rio Othon Palace hotel. “Lack of sleep is definitely a big thing,” he said. “If I get five hours of sleep a night, it’s really a good night. It’s been more averaging three.”

Bridgestone fell victim to a common rookie mistake at the Games: excessive ambition. It ran five separate waves of guest programs, requiring a complete turnover of nearly 50 hotel rooms every few days in a matter of hours. Right away, the guest programs started with a lunch and a trip to Christ the Redeemer, followed by an Olympic sporting event, all within 12 hours of landing at Rio’s Tom Jobim International Airport.

For good measure, throw in the widely divergent cultural attitudes toward schedules among Bridgestone guests from four continents, and try to run the whole show with a team of only 15 workers.

“It’s too aggressive, now that we think about it,” Pacsi said. “It’s taxing on the hotel staff, but it’s killing my staff.”

Worth the effort

The crisis management for Bridgestone started well before Pacsi landed in Rio in late July. Golf had been at the centerpiece of its hospitality plans in Rio, and the sport suffered the drip-drip-drip of star players dropping out, one by one.

Then, in early June, Bridgestone’s account executive at the IOC, Jamie Corr, left for a job at GMR Marketing, forcing a quick reshuffle in the homestretch. Fortunately for Bridgestone, the IOC hired Corr’s replacement, Jamie Rocha, from GlideSlope, which already represented the company.

Once he returns from Rio, Pacsi and Bridgestone won’t get much rest. The unanswered questions about Pyeongchang are significant.

For starters, February is the tire-selling doldrums. “So there’s no obvious play,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out how we make that fit together for our sales cycle.”

One possibility is a campaign that starts during the Olympic trials, at the front end of winter sports season — in calendar year 2017, which is being budgeted now. “And if it’s going to be some winter-themed creative, we have to shoot that this winter,” Pacsi said.

Meanwhile, the company is still determining how to run its Olympic program over the long term. Bridgestone has launched a global office out of its Tokyo headquarters, and Pacsi is playing a key role for now, but important details are still being ironed out.

Earlier in the Games, though, Pacsi received a message that reminded him it was all worth it. A manager of a “low-volume sales” store in Missouri wrote with excitement: “One of my customers came in and said, ‘I want DriveGuard tires, because I saw a commercial on the Olympics.’ That makes you feel good.”

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