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My conversation with Ivan

Photo by: DAVID LUBARSKY
With a wry smile, Ivan Pollard extends his right hand and welcomes me to Coca-Cola’s global headquarters in Atlanta. The gentlemanly Brit, a key figure shaping the brand’s sports marketing, asks about my travels, offers me a refreshment and walks me to a small corner office. I had met Pollard once or twice before and found him charming and interesting, so I
Catching Up With  
Ivan Pollard


SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT,
STRATEGIC MARKETING,
COCA-COLA NORTH AMERICA
was looking forward to getting his point of view on the state of advertising and media, and what brands should be focusing on in reaching today’s consumer. But he also touched on areas that concern him in sports, the indie band he thinks will be huge, and why he’s always running to beat yesterday’s time. What follows is my conversation with Ivan Pollard.

“When I was at college at Nottingham, I studied physics for two weeks and realized I was never going to be a physicist. So I started looking at other things to do. In the ’80s in England, advertising was one of those hip professions, and I always wanted to be a creative. My friend, Jon Steel, and I were talking about what we were going to do after college, and he said he was going to be a school teacher. I was like, ‘No, come on! That’s crazy! Let’s go into advertising. You be the brains, and I’ll be the pencil.’ He went to London and worked for a very good advertising agency and became a very good planner. He was very good (Steel eventually ran the planning at Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein).

THE PATH OF POLLARD

Dec. 2015: Named senior vice president of strategic marketing for Coca-Cola North America, with responsibility for content, connections, investment, assets, portfolio strategy and innovations.
2011: Joined Coca-Cola as vice president of global connections.
2005: Named group partner at Naked Communications.
2003: Became partner at The Ingram Partnership.
1997: Opened his own strategic connections planning agency, Unity.
1995: Joined Wieden & Kennedy, Amsterdam, as media planner
1987: Joined Boase Massimi Pollitt as head of media planning

“Meanwhile, I was languishing in Nottingham, not being able to get a job. I was 25 or 26, doing community work and playing soccer for a little bit of money. Coming out of college, I fancied myself as a creative, so I was creating things like children’s stories and a string of greeting cards, which were threatening Valentines, like ‘Be my Valentine or I’ll shoot your dog!’ It was completely wrong at the time.

“Jon wrote me and said, ‘You’ve got to admit you’re never going to make it as a creative, but have you ever thought about media?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what that is, but yes I’ll think about it.’ I went down to London after he got me an interview. I went thinking, ‘It’s a day trip and I’ll go to one of the best ad agencies in London and hang out with people and see my friends as well.’ I went skeptical, but I went out saying, ‘God, I want to work here, this is what I want to do.’ Not knowing much, I read every book in the library that I could get my hands on about media. I studied up on everything and eventually got the job.”

So you spend nearly three decades at agencies in London — at DDB, Needham, Wieden & Kennedy and Naked Communications. Why did you want to leave the U.K. to come to the States in 2011 to work for Coca-Cola?

“After almost 27 years of working on the agency side, this was a company where no matter where I went in the world, any office I walked into, it genuinely had some of the nicest, smartest people that I had ever worked with and that remains true today.

“Was it a risk? Certainly a challenge — whether I was right for the corporate environment, especially the American corporate environment, was a serious question. Everybody that knew me asked that. But I don’t think it was a risk.

“The biggest challenge is the size and scale of this business, in that I never have worked in an organization that requires so much careful alignment to make sure you do the right thing. That’s the challenge, the size and scale of what you’re doing. Also making sure we’re protecting the legacy of all that’s gone before, and building on that. There’s a responsibility to always do things right, to make sure we do the right thing.

“My very first memory of color television is from the FIFA 1970 World Cup Final in Mexico, and I have four colors in my head. It was the first time we rented a TV to watch that event in England. I remember the color green for the pitch, yellow and blue for the Brazil team and red for the Coca-Cola boards behind the goal. It’s associated forever in my mind with my passion for sport and television. The mechanics of how our brands get that attribution, how some of that magic of sport rub off on our brands, that subtle little connection, are among the reasons all these big corporations are willing to pay for the rights to sponsor sports.

“You can prove it works. Whether or not we’re paying the right price for it, I think, is the debate. One of the things that is a challenge is to stand out in a very cluttered environment without getting in the way of the fans, and ideally enhancing the experience. The degree to which we want to engage you in an activity with our brand and take your mind away from the sport, that’s a tricky thing to do. The thing you shouldn’t do is get in the way.

“One of the reasons I’ve loved Coke ever since I was a kid is my first memory of color television from the 1970 World Cup Final from Mexico … I remember the color green for the pitch, yellow and blue for the Brazil team and red for the Coca-Cola boards behind the goal. It’s associated forever in my mind with my passion for sport and television.”

IVAN POLLARD

“The only surprise [about American sports] is the passion and the power of college sports compared to any other market I’ve been in. That surprised me.”

There is so much clutter and so many platforms out there. What should brands be focused on when it comes to sports marketing?

“Brands should think long and hard about how they best stay relevant. If you’re a brand in sports, you’re thinking long and hard about how you stand out in the very cluttered environment and to do so in a way that doesn’t get in the way.

“There are two things people in the business of sport need to think about. One is oversupply. If the benefit of being associated with sports is the rub off of the moment and the magic, if there’s too much of that, then it becomes mundane and ordinary. What we’re looking for is the extraordinary. The second is the future of the virtual experience, and if one can have the experience as good as live, if not better. We have got to think about what happens then and how that works. If we can create experiences that are as good as being there, what is the future of teenagers who have experiences where they don’t want to watch, they actually want to play? Do I want to watch the real thing or do I want to play in the virtual world? The virtual spectating experience offers scale and ways of engaging, so that’s a super huge positive thing.”

The cultures of an agency and global brand are drastically distinct — what’s the biggest difference in your mind?

“In an agency, risk-taking is super easy, because that’s your business. Your business is to take risks and change rules, whereas in a corporation with shareholders and stakeholders and people’s livelihood riding on it, risk-taking is important, but much more considered. The upside of being in a company like this is we can genuinely change the world. We can do things that are good for the world and good for society. We can use all of our powers to do that. So that kind of responsibility is a different level than the responsibility you have with your colleagues, employees and clients when you’re in an agency.”

I find innovation to be among the most overused yet under-realized nouns in the sports business. What does innovation mean to you and how do you get there?

“To steal a line from Jon Steel, he said, ‘Innovation is looking at all the things everyone else has looked at, seeing something nobody else has seen, and then doing something really useful with it to add value.’ Finding that is the hard part, but that’s where the genius is. You can put processes in place and have techniques for getting innovation out, but it ultimately resides in the genius of the individual or the collective to look at all the things everyone has, seeing something everyone else hasn’t seen and then do something about it.

But in attempting to innovate, we’ve all seen failure.

Pollard says brands must strive to stand out in a cluttered market.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
“Failure is good when you understand why and learn and apply that learning to the next thing that you do. The idea that failure is good has slightly challenged me, because obviously you don’t want to fail. Success is better than failure, even good failure. But in order to succeed, a lot of people will tell you that you have to hit the ropes and learn from the things that didn’t work to be able to get to the breakthrough that does. So failing once is OK, as long as you learn. Failing twice at the same thing is not good and is always something I’ve tried to avoid. If you go through life never failing, you’re very lucky. But the people I admire the most are the people who took chances and didn’t fail. We’re in danger of a cultural norm that it’s brilliant to fail and if you haven’t failed, you won’t ever succeed. I get where that’s coming from, but I admire people who don’t fail even more who still take risks and make the breakthroughs.”

How are you going to get away from it all this summer?

“Honestly, I never do get away from it. I love what I do, who I do it with and who I do it for. I feel very lucky to have landed in this place from where I started trying to sell crappy greeting cards to strange people.”

Nothing you’re reading or watching or listening to that gets your mind off work?

“Nearly all of my media comes through sport, nearly all. But I love movies, I love music. I will drift around almost everywhere. I read 17 novels a year, I’m still an avid magazine reader so I read Men’s Journal. I’m very happy watching ‘Blind Spot’ and catching up with ‘The Walking Dead.’ I just discovered a band called the MisterWives, they’re going to be huge. And I’ve just finished reading a lady called Deborah Harkness, three books called ‘The Discovery of Witches,’ a trilogy, it’s all about witches, vampires and magicians. But I’ll read anything.”

I know you love to run and have done a lot of marathons and triathlons. Isn’t that your way of getting away from it all and decompressing?

“I run every day, mostly because I don’t drive. I don’t own a car. I’ve only ever driven for one week in my life, which was when I got my license in England. So running’s been for pleasure and necessity. I run to work about 3 1/2 miles every day. Later, I go work out at the gym, and then run home. What’s brilliant about it is I do it because I love it. It gives you some quiet time; it allows you to unwind. I love the idea of trying to beat yesterday, which the older you get, you never do.”

Abraham D. Madkour can be reached at amadkour@sportsbusinessjournal.com.

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