Global unity, solidarity, excellence and fair play, friendship and education through sport.” These are values of the Olympic Games. But the slogans and headlines you’ll see in a host city might be a little different. “Welcome to the nightmare” was a newspaper headline in the lead-up to the 1996 Atlanta Games. “Tickets for the rich” screamed another in the months before the 2000 Sydney Games – a horrendous crime in Australia’s egalitarian culture. Exciting the public should be a breeze, but that’s not always the case with the greatest show on earth. 

Raising a huge pool of funds to improve transport and create new infrastructure, inconveniences to the public, managing ticket sales and thousands of people wanting a slice are some of the issues faced by the Olympic Games organisers. It’s not easy to keep the public happy, but in every host city there’s a team of people geared up to do just that.  

How successful the lead up to the Games is also affects the marketing efforts of every Olympic sponsor and associate.

Learning from past efforts – by understanding the public’s mood and tapping into human nature – these Olympic communicators have developed a clear cycle of communications, anticipating the ups and downs of the lead up to the Games.

Marketers need to understand how this cycle of public sentiment works, and where the organisers’ communication priorities lie, to optimise their own Olympic efforts.

What goes around comes around
Beijing, Sydney, Athens, Vancouver, London, the Black Sea resort of Sochi... the Olympic Games host cities are as diverse as you can get. You would think that each city’s organising committee face entirely unique issues as they plan their public information and communication programmes.

But what’s fascinating – and convenient for Olympic marketers – is that regardless of culture or venue, the cycle of public sentiment follows a similar process.

First there’s euphoria at the bid win. Then in rapid succession there’s disinterest, apathy, boredom and sometimes cynicism. As the Games creep up, people start to get involved.  And finally, there’s a reignited passion: pride in the city, the people and the nation.

Sandy Hollway, CEO of Sydney 2000, and the once beleaguered, now venerated public face of the Sydney Games, calls the phases of public sentiment “very natural”.

“It is important to understand the cycle... it’s a reality, not fiction,” says Hollway.

When the then-president of the International Olympic Committee Jaun Antonio Samaranch announced “the winner is Sydney”, the city exploded into euphoric celebrations and the bid team became instant heroes. This phenomenon has played out in every summer and winter Games host city since.

The Games committee is given seven years to pull it together and no one can stay in that state of euphoria for that long. “I think people go back to their normal day-to-day lives and simply, if they think about it at all, expect that someone is getting on with a decent job of organising [the Games],” says Hollway.

“There’s a sort of ‘reminder’ phase for years, where what we’re after is not ecstasy, but a reminder that it’s coming, and a feeling that things are under control,” he adds.

The London 2012 Games director of communications and public affairs Jackie Brock-Doyle and her team are tackling this “reminder” challenge with gusto. “The real priority is to know that [trough] is going to happen and to try to manage that, so the balloon doesn’t completely deflate. You’ve got to keep people engaged, so they feel they have ownership and a say in it.”

Are the Olympic Games coming?
Every organising committee faces a stage where the Games are not a reality for anyone. The city’s people see inconvenient road closures, construction, VIP visits, money spent with no immediate benefits and a host of other irritations.

Hollway describes the organiser’s task as “not so much to drum up artificial, high-level emotional support for the Games again, but to do just enough to keep people informed and reminded that the Games are coming.”

The messages out there during this phase are tried and tested: cultural festivals, venue openings, sponsorship launches and roadshows. It’s also a time to push operational messages such as volunteering and ticketing, and the ongoing educational messages of the Olympic values. It’s a critical time for sponsors to mark out their territory and begin their own programmes.

As the Games approach, communicators try to generate excitement again, to get back the initial euphoria. “The campaign should do that... the single greatest asset being the torch relay,” says Hollway.

Carrying the torch
Brock-Doyle’s unwavering confidence that people will stay engaged in London in part comes from her experience working on Sydney’s torch relay and the Manchester Commonwealth Games in 2002.

Both Brock-Doyle and Hollway describe the Sydney torch relay as the turning point in public opinion. “When the torch relay hit Australia, a switch just flicked to positive for us. We were able to then prove we knew what we were doing. People recognised that we did a marvellous job,” recalls Hollway.

What flicked the switch? Quite simply, the torch relay takes the Games to the people. It travelled within a two-hour drive of nearly every Australian, an epic feat in such a sparse nation.

In China, it’s going to be more impressive. The torch relay will travel to every Chinese province, traversing greater distances and reaching more people than ever before.

Hollway has spent significant amounts of time consulting with the Beijing organising committee and, in the early days, was asked what the balance should be between the international running of the torch and the running of it through China. He unapologetically and unambiguously said it was far more important to run the relay through China.

“That will get China the international exposure. Not running it through Sydney or anywhere else, lovely gesture though that might be. That will generate the enthusiasm and make the people of China think that it’s their Games,” says Hollway.

In China, the torch relay has the added bonus of running the Olympic brand, and any associated sponsors’ brands, right past the front doors of some of the world’s most coveted consumers.

Getting it right
Brock-Doyle talks at length about her biggest challenge: engagement. A successful Olympic Games is one that is seized by the public. And this is why Hollway talks of the organisers as “organisational muscle and bone and sinew to make the thing work”, but says the heart, soul and spirit of a Games is poured into it by the people.

Both credit local public support as vital to the success of the Games. Londoners are paying for the Games and therefore have a strong and justifiable expectation of a local legacy. China is hoping the Beijing Games puts the country even more firmly on the world stage.

Hollway says the Beijing organisers have a profound understanding that their people are the key to achieving their Olympic dreams. “The Chinese public being happy will lead to international success.”

He uses the opening ceremony of the Games as an example. “You can only have an opening ceremony that’s effective by doing something that appeals to your own people.  And if it does that, the international community will look at it and say, that’s what we wanted to see. We don’t want a homogenised version of some Las Vegas show.”

Hollway does concede that a balance is required: “I’m not a mug about this – I think one always has to think about what will appeal to the international psyche, but the fundamental requirement is to do something of which your local public would be proud.”   

Going for gold
The marketing winners will be those who can create some kind of local ownership of the Games, and by association, their products and services. The Olympic gold will go to those who can win new customers in the host nation and maximise international appeal and awareness.

Brock-Doyle says the ideal is sponsors and Olympic committees working hand-in-hand, with sponsors’ initiatives reflecting the host city’s Olympic aspirations because “at the end of the day, that’s what they’ve bought into.”

“Without their activation programmes, we couldn’t have the type of reach [we need]. They become a really important vehicle to delivering our aspirations for our Games and the excitement and what the Games stand for,” adds Brock-Doyle.

Hollway thinks the partnership between sponsors and organising committees is practical, with many sponsors set up with “an existing capacity and instinct towards public relations and marketing.”

He places equal importance on their monetary capacity. “The penny has to be wisely spent. Priorities have to be set. In those circumstances, if you can collaborate with sponsors... then everybody gets more bang for their buck.”

But simply raising awareness through an Olympic sponsorship isn’t enough. Organisers and sponsors are after the same thing: an event so well organised that they can stand back and let the public grab it and make it their own.

Both want the type of headlines seen in Sydney after the closing ceremony: “We had the time of our lives”.

If they gear their messages to each stage of the cycle of public sentiment, they might just get there.


On being an Olympic cheerleader
Linda Collard is a former member of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG). She offers her views and those of senior figures for the Sydney 2000 and the London 2012 Games on the pressure of fulfilling Olympic-sized expectations.

"What do you do for a living?” It’s a harmless enough question when posed at an evening dinner party among friends and associates. But it’s a question loaded with complications when you work for the Olympic Games. Do you really want to spend the next hour justifying every dollar spent and convincing nay-sayers that it will be the opportunity of a lifetime? Do you have the courage to stand up to criticism, or do you just mumble something about being “between jobs”?

That’s what it was like in 1998, only two years before the Sydney Olympic Games. In the end, the Games were everything people expected and more. But in the bleak days of budget blowouts, media scrutiny and Olympic fatigue, leisure time could be quite stressful in the company of hostile Sydney residents.

There was even a running joke that we’d rather work in a sandwich shop. But the fact was, the communications team for SOCOG was always ready to convert just one more Sydney-sider to the cause.

Jackie Brock-Doyle, head of communications for London 2012, is now facing the same challenges. Asked if she ever wishes to be more anonymous at social occasions, Brock-Doyle hesitates, but says she’d prefer to talk to people about their concerns than hide from them.

She’s buoyed by the knowledge gained from working on previous Olympic Games. “It’s a dream job. I know it’s going to be great. I try to make people confident about what we are trying to achieve.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Sydney 2000 chief Sandy Hollway is more frank about what it’s like to be the face of the Games. “You have to feel immensely fortunate and privileged and humbled by the opportunity,” he says. “On the whole, people are very fair.  When you do come in for a bit of stick [criticism], you have to take it on the chin – you can’t be defensive. The key is to show people that the organisation is prepared to hear them, and to work your heart out to correct something if it is wrong. If you do that, I think you’ll find the public reacts very well.”

Hollway points out that silence is “near fatal”, and says that even when the news headlines were bad, he always felt lucky to have the job.

“I think we behaved very properly, taking it on the chin, trying to absorb it and learn from it. If you didn’t do that I think the public would flay you alive and rightly so. It was marvellous after the Games, when it had all been a huge success and everyone had the absolute time of their lives.”

One of Hollway’s favourite post-Games stories sums up what organisers put their lives on hold to achieve.

“I was having dinner in a restaurant in Bondi, a few weeks after the Games, and the waitress recognised me and started talking about what a wonderful time she’d had at the Games. She came up and said, ‘I’ve lived in Sydney for many years and I’ve always loved the city. But it wasn’t until we had the Olympic Games that I knew I loved the people.’  You can’t make that stuff up,” Hollway concludes.