Toronto 2015, the host company for the 2015 Pan and Parapan American Games, has begun an agency search to develop a brand for both the organization and the Games themselves.
In November, Toronto won the honour to host the 42-country Games and to serve as the hub of an event that will take place throughout Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe region.
After naming Ian Troop as CEO in February, Toronto 2015 began to address questions of promoting the event to North and South Americans.
On April 9, Toronto 2015 kicked off its agency search by issuing a request for qualifications. By May, Troop expects to have an agency short list that will be reviewed by a panel of experts.
“I’m a packaged goods guy,” said Troop, who previously worked with Procter & Gamble and ConAgra Foods. “We’ll use a panel of people who have event and marketing experience to get the right group.”
A single winning shop will be named in June.
“We need to create a compelling articulation that gets people excited and sets it apart from other events. Its a classic brand architecture exercise,” Troop said, adding that the potential exists to shape the Games permanently for the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO), the event’s governing body.
“We recognize that we’re in a nascent stage… We know what the deliverables are in terms of venues, the number of athletes and sports. We need to build around that. It’s twice as big as the Vancouver Olympics from a [number of events] standpoint. It’s the second-biggest games in the world.”
Despite the scale of the 48-sport competition, Troop foresees a more intimate event than Vancouver with smaller venues that give the public more access to athletes and their sports.
Toronto 2015 also wants to create a cultural festival around the Games, Troop said, and sees opportunities to work with existing cultural festivals in the region.
“Pan America is such an interesting and diverse place. We’ve got Caribana we can leverage, we’ve got Luminato we can integrate,” creating a significant tourism property.
Media buying and public relation agency reviews are expected in the future.
