2012 London Olympics

It’s the second Summer Games that Universal Sports has released an ad on NBC in prime time. It first did so during the Beijing Games in 2008.

The network, which is owned by InterMedia Sports, received $10 million in media value from NBC, which owns a minor stake in the network, during the Olympics. In addition to ads on NBC prime time, it has spots on MSNBC, CNBC, NBC Sports Network and NBCOlympics.com.

Most of its advertising is directed at the final weekend of Olympic competition, which Sternberg hopes will help drive avid and new Olympic fans to the network over the next year.

The network currently is in 35 million homes. Sternberg said he expects to land two new distribution deals before the end of the year.

“We’re hoping to build that (distribution),” he said. “We hope to have a big cable distribution announcement soon. Between now and the end of the year, there will be at least two new distribution carriers.”

Sternberg was in London attending his first Olympics. He arrived this week for an eight-day trip.

“There’s an element of fun and leisure, but I’ve also been here meeting with our international federation partners,” Sternberg said. “We’re extending programming deals and talking about working together on marketing initiatives in the U.S. market. It’s an opportunity to come to one place and see everybody.”

Dizdarevic said that the company discouraged ticket buyers from picking up tickets the first day and did the best it could to manage the line that formed by handing out water and umbrellas to provide shade.

“What the media writes is unfair,” Dizdarevic said. “They look at the single individual who has one issue or another. I can still proudly say that the customer satisfaction is 99.9 percent.”

Dizdarevic said that of 140,000 people who went through Jet Set (CoSport) to buy tickets, only 1,400 customers had issues that they brought to the company’s attention. On a case-by-case basis, the company worked to upgrade those customers’ ticket packages.

“Wherever we could, we did not care about money,” Dizdarevic said. “It was about customer satisfaction.”

The entire ticketing process London organizers used has been under fire throughout the Olympics. British Olympic Association Chairman Lord Colin Moynihan called on the International Olympic Committee to take over the process for future Olympics.

Dizdarevic, who has been involved in Olympic ticket sales since the 1980s, said the IOC should review the ticket sales process in London, but he didn’t have any specific suggestions for improving it.

“The systems for the Olympic Games in general are improving from Games to Games, but there are problems always,” Dizdarevic said. “As long as they have this type of system, problems will continue. There are easier ways for the future, but who am I to tell the world the best ticket system.”

“It will be interesting to see what the legacy will be,” said Sam Rush, chief operating officer of Wasserman Media Group’s European business. “Football is all we care about here. In six weeks time, will we be back to the Premiership or will some sports such as cycling continue to grow?”

Steve Martin, CEO at M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment, which worked with Coca-Cola during the Olympics, said he expects some of the brands that sponsored the Olympics the last seven years will look to extend that commitment and capitalize on the nation’s nascent passion for Team GB sports, but he was uncertain of how extensive their investments would be.

“The Team GB guys have to go to the market next week because their sponsorships end after the Games,” Martin said. “You can look at that as an unbelievable opportunity because the Games have shown how sport can generate passion and the power of aligning with Team GB, or it could be a problem because of the macro environment we’re in means that not everyone is flush with cash after the credit crunch. Nobody knows if the dollars will roll in or if it will be doom and gloom.”

Some of the sponsorship dollars will be redirected into other big sports events destined for the U.K. in the coming years. The nation will host track and field’s world championships in 2013, the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and the Rugby World Cup in 2015.

That will make it tough for Olympic sports to keep sponsors’ marketing dollars, but marketing executives believe that after brands have evaluated results from the London Games, they will preserve some commitment to Olympic sports.

“A lot of it will get re-invested into other sponsorships and sporting properties,” said Eddie May, who heads Threepipe Sport, a sports marketing PR agency. “Because of some of the success of Team GB, there will be a big appetite to keep involved in these sports in big ways. A fair proportion of it will still be there. I don’t think all of that investment will suddenly stop after the Olympics.”

Yahoo also said it has reached more than 80 million unique visitors globally for its coverage from London.

During both Vancouver and Beijing, Yahoo beat NBCOlympics.com reach metrics, and to that end, the London totals are not surprising. Yahoo has held the top spot in regular monthly sports reach rankings in all but one month during the past four years, and the company frequently touts itself as the starting point on the Internet.

Furthermore, the Olympics are a mainstream cultural event that appeals to casual and non-sports fans, an audience Yahoo reaches more easily than NBCOlympics.com.

Levy credited the new resources being devoted to the group with helping it land gold-medal-winning gymnast Jordyn Wieber as a client shortly before the London Games. The group hired Tasha Schwikert, a former Olympic gymnast who won bronze in the 2000 Sydney Games, after creating the new division, and Schwikert recruited Wieber.

“The Jordyn signing is interesting because it seems like a natural extension for us, but without committing to growing the resources the way we did, we may not have been able to get into gymnastics,” Levy said.

In addition to signing Wieber, Wasserman has worked with USA Cycling on sponsorship sales and has begun talking to other national governing bodies about managing their sponsorship sales, as well.

Levy said the action sports and Olympics division will hire more staff and will lean on the rest of Wasserman’s staff to support the group.

“We’re in an aggressive mode and see an opportunity from here to Rio,” Levy said. “Rio is going to be enormous.”

■ What brands that you aren’t working with have done the best job marketing around these Olympics?

PLUCHINO: It’s hard to say who’s done the best. Everyone’s got different objectives and different budgets.

O’CONNOR: Visa’s campaign has taken a new twist. I love the David Boudia spot from Dubai. It’s ingenious integrating different athletes into different countries. The spot says, on average, he makes 25,000 dives a year, I believe, and it’s simulated as if it’s 180 dives off the world’s tallest building in Dubai. It’s fantastic creative.

BMW's Mini has played a support role at the Olympic Stadium.

I’m also intrigued by how BMW infiltrated the sponsor-free venue of the stadium to get their vehicles actually in there.

■ Not once but twice because BMW got a Mini into the opening ceremony as well.

KATZOFF: Yes. That was the first time that’s happened since Atlanta.

PLUCHINO: Also, I think we had Mr. Bean with a Samsung Galaxy.

KATZOFF: Samsung is the one that really got through to me. Not only because of what they’ve done with the Olympics, but the fact that they could time the product launch to get it out right now with all of this going on. … The mobile payments, I don’t know if you’ve seen that phone and its payments, what they’ve done with Visa is amazing.

PLUCHINO: Honestly, not just because two people who work with them are here, I like what BP has done. From an integration perspective, what they’ve done on the Park, how they’ve integrated athletes, what they’ve done at USA House, all of the things moving around the city that I’ve seen — I think they’ve done a very good job. They have a specific objective they’re trying to reach.

British heptathlete Jessica Ennis has become a face of the Games in London. GETTY IMAGES

KATZOFF: I’m impressed with what they’ve done with (British heptathlete) Jessica Ennis, too. She obviously has a lot of sponsors, but they jumped in there early. I remember being here a year and a half ago and her face was staring at me from every gas pump. She’s become the face of the Games.

■ If those brands get an A grade, what sponsors get demerits?

PLUCHINO: I’ll give you one that’s missed the opportunity. It’s Acer. They have a nice, big facility out there at Olympic Park, but it’s truly a product showcase. It’s a computer show. I’ve heard people come out of it saying, “It isn’t interactive. It’s not any fun.”

■ Could the IOC learn something from that? You can’t make a company activate, but couldn’t you be more selective in who your sponsors are?

PLUCHINO: It’s not quite that easy. Everybody has their own objectives. Everybody is able to leverage how they want as long as it’s in the rules. In theory, you’re right, but they still have open slots in the TOP program that they’re trying to fill.

■ Mary, did you have someone you didn’t feel like connected on this stage?

O’CONNOR: I haven’t seen anyone who I say, “I wish they’d done more.” The one company I haven’t seen a lot of, and it may be because I’m in my little hole, is: I’ve seen a lot of Omega people, but I haven’t seen what they’re doing.

KATZOFF: SportsMark (a Radiate agency) is managing their hospitality. Their major activation is Soho House. It’s very exclusive. They’re doing all their brand ambassador programs there. We did the Greg Norman media event there talking about golf coming back to the Olympics. They did their Astronaut program there.

The only one for me, and like Mary said, it’s not fair to be critical of programs we’re not involved in, but I’m just trying to figure out why McDonald’s seems to be pretty quiet to me for a worldwide sponsor.

O’CONNOR: I like the storefront (restaurant on Olympic Park). I went so that I could say I was at the world’s biggest McDonald’s.

■ On the ambush front, there was the brand police issue coming into this, but there’s been no real ambush issues arise during the Games. Are you surprised?

O’CONNOR: (Knocking on the wooden table) Compared to Vancouver, where I spent 90 percent of my time dealing with ambush against our clients, this Games has been a dream come true.

PLUCHINO: We haven’t had any problems. We haven’t heard much, either. There was the Dr. Dre Beat headphones, but that’s the only thing you’re hearing.

■ So what’s the takeaway from how quiet it’s been in regards to ambush? What needs to be done similarly to ensure this happens in 2014 and 2016?

O’CONNOR: A lot of it has to do with the education that’s come from what happened in Vancouver and Beijing, and the simple fact that the British government did a fantastic job of making it against the law to ambush. It’s brilliant. It’s smart. It protects sponsor rights.

KATZOFF: The last two years of work have really paid off. A lot of times it really becomes a Games-time operation (to prevent ambush), but here there was a lot of work and a lot of thought and a lot of compliance issues that were put together. When you look at us together and the number of brands we’re activating here, it’s been remarkable.

■ What about the downside of enforcement measures, such as forcing the local barbershop to take down the five-ring logo, which happened in limited cases around the city? Is the lesson for future cities to strike a balance between stopping Pepsi from ambushing and allowing local retailers to celebrate?

PLUCHINO: There’s a line when it comes to the local barbershop celebrating the Olympics and welcoming the world and a commercial link between that. Using your local barbershop example, if they hang the Olympic rings in their window, should they be hit with whatever fine?

KATZOFF: I would say looking forward that it’s more on the consumer retail side. None of us can control what the Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s (U.K. grocers) and other retail outlets are doing. The other thing is with the way businesses are changing, is Walmart a store or a bank? There are category issues. Also, some of these retailers are doing everything they can to move product around. The harder part down the line is controlling that third-party, retail affiliation. But overall, (ambush) hasn’t been an issue.

The increases are falling line in with the USOC’s strategy before the Games. The organization wanted to amass a huge audience on its social platforms so that it could continue to directly send them information and drive them to TeamUSA.org after the Olympics when most people begin to shift their attention to traditional sports like football and basketball.

“We’ve been focused on asking, ‘What can we do now to grow social platforms so we can extend interest after the Games?’” said Sarah Hollis, USOC senior director of digital media and broadcast services. “We’ve been able to do that so far.”

One of the biggest success stories for the USOC on the digital front has been increases in subscriptions for its YouTube channel. The channel is one of only a handful that YouTube is funding, and the USOC used that funding to develop videos about its athletes, film interviews with athletes and film segments around London.

The total number of subscribers to the channel, which launched in the spring, has risen to 21,000. By comparison, Alli Sports, which runs the Dew Tour, has 44,000 subscribers for its channel.

The new subscribers come at an important time for the USOC. Claude Ruibal, YouTube’s head of sports content, said he plans to make decisions later this year about what sports channels will continue to get YouTube funding. He met with USOC chief marketer Lisa Baird about it this week in London.

The other big improvement is the increase in the number of people interacting with Team USA content on Facebook. Historically, only 5 percent of the USOCs fans on Facebook click “like” or comment on posts, but during the Games, that total has risen to 35 percent.

For example, a recent video that was posted featuring Gabby Douglas highlights from the U.S. Olympic Trials last month got 220,000 “likes.”

“It’s getting into more people’s news feeds and extending the reach we have to a broader audience,” Hollis said.

The USOC has been producing 10 to 15 pieces of content for its website a day, ranging from photos to articles to videos.

It has been able to monetize the site, as well. The organization sold Games-time packages to existing sponsors Coca-Cola, Devry and Procter & Gamble. Each paid to brand a section on the organization’s website.

Coca-Cola historically focused all of its Olympic marketing around its core, soft-drink brands like Coke and Sprite, but this year it added Powerade and Vitaminwater to the mix.

Powerade developed the “Power Through” campaign for the London Games. Elements of the campaign are being used in 35 of its 70 markets worldwide. In the U.S., it’s airing commercials that show athletes training as a narrator talks about how the drink can help them perform their best. It also has print, digital and outdoor ads, signs in stores and an app.

“The Olympics are not about the value of winning medals,” Bisbis said. “The values are about excellence in sport, being the best you can be and good sportsmanship. That’s what we want to be about. Empowering every athlete to be the best they can be.”

Bisbis said that the number of markets participating in the campaign validates Powerade’s move in 2010 to begin using Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the World Cup in its global marketing. In 2010, 30 of 70 markets advertised around the World Cup and saw business gains as a result.

Globally, Powerade’s market share improved to 30 percent. Its biggest gains were in soccer-crazy Latin America, where it moved from a 20 percent share to a 30 percent share of the market.

“It brought the system back to growth,” Bisbis said, adding that the sales success around the World Cup prompted five more markets to use the Olympics in their marketing efforts.

In London, Powerade developed a branded “Hydration Center” that offers tips about staying hydrated to Olympians staying in the Athletes Village. It also distributed 48,000 Powerade Sports bottles to athletes.

The brand set up a sports academy in West London where it brought in 75 amateur athletes from around the world to train with former Olympians like Mechelle Lewis Freeman. The athletes ranged in age from 23 to 67.

While Freeman led the athletes in wind sprints earlier this week, Bisbis spoke about his expectations for Powerade’s growth during the Olympics. He said the brand won’t assess the impact of the Olympics for several months, but he was encouraged by early signs.

“Year-to-date, the brand has done great,” Bisbis said. “We’re growing double digits. Brand share is up.”

He expects that to continue as the London Games come to a close this Sunday.