It was a game of show and tell this morning at Marketing’s second annual Sports Marketing Conference as Dennis Kim, executive director of brand marketing at the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), shared the organization’s new brand identity and its plans to stay relevant in a post-Olympic world.
Kim, who kicked off the conference as the opening keynote speaker, took the audience through the COC’s rebranding initiative, including the new logo it unveiled earlier this week.
There’s still a lack of awareness around amateur sports, said Kim. One of the challenges facing the COC is staying relevant outside of the Olympic Games, which only run for 17-days every two years.
“We talk about the ebbs and flows of Games…. We want to smooth those curves out,” said Kim.
“We’re not a stadium. We don’t have rink boards to sell. That in itself is very difficult to quantify. But what we are is something very unique and very special… We’re Canada’s team,” he said.
Canadians care about their athletes, said Kim, which is why the COC will continue to host events that connect fans with their favourite athletes.
This experience will extend online and through social media, which Kim said provides huge opportunities for the organization. A microsite with a video telling the brand’s story went live on Monday. The COC is launching a new site Sept. 15 that will allow Olympians to aggregate their own content and better connect to their fans, said Kim.
The conference continued with Kathy Henderson, SVP of marketing and revenue for Toronto 2015 Pan/Parapan American Games Organizing Committee. Henderson shared how the organization is building the PanAm brand in Toronto.
The Pan/ParapanAm Games will be twice as big as the Vancouver Olympic Games in terms of venue and athlete numbers, but the Games are about more than buildings and venues, said Hendrson. It’s about leaving a legacy of active people and inspiring future athletes.
After the Games, 17 communities across the Golden Horseshoe will be left with world class sports facilities, she said.
Justin Creally, founder of North Strategic, closed out the first round of presentations with advice on how marketers can use PR and social media to extend the investment they make in sports properties.
People are naturally inclined to talk about sports, he said, and there’s no shortage of opportunities for brands to insert themselves in these conversations with “off-the-wall” branding programs.
One case study he presented was of a PR stunt for Diageo Canada developed and coordinated by High Road Communications, where Creally served as president for nearly two years before co-founding North Strategic earlier this year.
In 2008, Diageo wanted to promote its Smirnoff Ice label as the “official cooler” of the Toronto Maple Leafs at the start of the new NHL season.
To do so, Smirnoff suspended a hockey rink replica on the side of a building 10 storeys above Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square while a stunt duo played a little one-on-one.
The event continued with an outdoor big-screen broadcast of the NHL season opener between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings.
The end result: “millions upon millions of earned media impressions… The stunt provided more effective message delivery and recall than simply a billboard people see everyday,” said Creally.
When approaching sports marketing, Creally also said it’s important for brands to not only act quickly, but also listen to the conversations happening around a particular event. To celebrate the NHL’s return to Winnipeg, Canadian Tire worked with North Strategic to place 1,500 branded hockey sticks printed with the words “Welcome Home” in downtown Winnipeg.
The sticks were in place three days after the announcement was made, and was covered by local and national media.
The Sports Marketing Conference concludes this afternoon. To see what else is happening there, search for #sportsmark11 on Twitter.
