Andrea Shaw became a fixture of Canadian Olympic sports marketing when she served as vice president of sponsorship, sales and marketing for the Vancouver Games. She carried that knowledge, and clients such as the Canadian Olympic Committee, with her when she founded TwentyTen Group in 2010. The agency’s latest venture is guiding Snow Sports Canada, a consortium that combines the marketing efforts of all seven of Canada’s Olympic snow sport organizations — alpine, biathlon, snowboard, freestyle, cross country, Nordic combined and ski jumping — which have struggled individually after the Winter Games left town in 2010.
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As sponsorship gets increasingly sophisticated, especially since our Games, they needed to bring in the right expertise in order to bring in the right sponsorship, and they just didn’t have the wherewithal.”
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Photo: COURTESY OF TWENTY TEN GROUP
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On the state of the Canadian national sport organizations before Snow Sports Canada: These NSOs are fairly small. They’re on tight budgets. When you lose sponsorship and you don’t have that financial capability, it’s hard to tool your NSO with people with the expertise that’s required, really.
On progress so far: It’s new territory for all of them. … They all took a very high-level view and vision of what the opportunity is here, and it’s commendable that they all came together and did that. … We’re learning and they’re learning. As we garner success with corporate partners, we’re going to get stronger together. It’s in its toddler stage.
On the difference between hockey and snow sports marketing: We are a country of ice and snow. Ice is sophisticated. It is a very mature and sophisticated opportunity. Snow sports is coming together. It’s a very young brand, but in that we see massive potential.
On strategy: Right now our biggest challenge, but also opportunity, is elevating that brand and bringing it to a place where corporate Canada recognizes the opportunity. … We love our winter and we love our snow.
