Visa and IOC – losing at cards?

Marketing material from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) emphasises the positive attributes of the Olympic movement with research showing the terms that people associate with the Games include: 
Fair competition 
Participation 
Dignified 
Respectful

Similarly, the IOC highlights the attributes that people don’t associate with the Games:
Exclusive
Commercialised
Selfish
Self centred 
Exploitative

In other words the Olympics is all about being inclusive, friendly, non exploitative and not over-commercialised.

How does that image fit with the insistence that the only way to buy a ticket to the 2012 London Games with a credit or debit card from the organiser will be to use Visa?

Put simply it doesn’t fit. It feels:
Exclusive
Greedy 
Paranoid 
Commercialised  
Inconvenient

… and several other negative adjectives to boot. It is the equivalent of saying that you are forced to eat McDonald’s and drink Coca-Cola if you attend.

There are 91 million Visa cards issued in the UK compared to 40 million MasterCards and four million American Express cardholders. In other words Visa is market leader but there are many people who do not have a Visa card or who don’t use it as their primary card. For those visiting London from abroad, the ratio of Visa cardholders is likely to be similar. Overseas fans will, however, be able to use other cards if purchasing tickets from their national Olympic committee, rather than London 2012 sites.

But the sponsorship deal also means that once on site, fans without Visa cards will not be able to withdraw cash from ATMs or make purchases at any Olympic sites unless they have cash. The London Organising Committee (LOCOG) hasannounced that it will be possible to buy a temporary pre-paid Visa card for the Olympics. It didn’t say whether or not you could buy one using a MasterCard.

The UK Office of Fair Trading is currently investigating the arrangement and could be in a position to rule against it. The question is – why hasn’t the IOC, LOCOG or the PR department of Visa beaten them to it?

Yes in cash terms Visa will earn more by being the exclusive card of the Games, it might even force a few people to switch from a rival or to take out an extra new card. In terms of global daily use and uptake of Visa, however, that’s a drop in the ocean.

That is hardly what Visa’s global sponsorship strategy is about. Surely it became a partner of the IOC and FIFA to make a statement of confidence in being number one in the market. And being allied to the most popular and, arguably most multi-cultural sporting events on the planet is also about being inclusive and democratic.

And what is the likely outcome of this insistence that people pay using Visa? Most Visa holders probably won’t be upset or angry because they haven’t been inconvenienced, although I suspect a fair few will think less of their card issuer. For holders of other cards however, who realistically want to buy online or over the phone, they are effectively being told that they can’t.

Sure, they could pay by cheque – but let’s face it, most of us never use cheques anymore and for buying tickets they aren’t ideal. You simply don’t know that the tickets will still be available by the time the cheque has been cashed, so if you need to have a second or third option, it could take weeks of playing postal tag.

And anyway, shouldn’t logic dictate that the only cheques acceptable be those issued by banking partner Lloyds TSB?

The reality is that of the 10 million tickets on sale, around two million members of the public will be told that they can’t simply complete a normal shopping transaction because they’ve had the audacity to use the wrong card issuer.

We are in living an age when major companies talk about customers being ‘brand ambassadors’. Many spend a fortune on experiential marketing to a few thousand people in the knowledge that on average they will tell another 17 about their experience.

In an era of Twitter and Facebook and the ability of members of the public to start viral campaigns that can go global in a matter of hours, do Visa and the IOC really want to recruit an army of two million ‘brand assassins’?

The whole issue has already resulted in acres of bad press and no one has yet been refused a ticket.

Visa has a huge opportunity to activate its sponsorship programme without punishing non-customers and likewise the IOC/LOCOG are making a big mistake if they consider that the interests of sponsors come before those of the public.

Successful sponsorship activation can only be achieved through being honest and respectful of customers and engaging with them. Telling them which products they can and can’t use is closer to bullying than enticing.

In this game of cards the winner is most likely to be MasterCard.

Simon Rines is publisher of International Marketing Reports ( imrpublications.com ). IMR is a sports marketing and sponsorship intelligence publisher and produces management reports on sports sponsorship. IMR is also publisher of the International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship and provides extensive editorial content on its website.

http://www.articlesbase.com/international-marketing-articles/visa-and-ioc-losing-at-cards-2856592.html

The Real Cost of London’s Olympic Bid

www.frumforum.com/the-real-cost-of-londons-olympic-bid

Britain’s Spectator magazine has taken a page from WikiLeaks and uncovered its own scandal about what London had to agree to before being awarded the 2012 Olympic Games.

This, trumpets the Speccy is “entirely without the help of Julian Assange.”

We all know that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reeks of favoritism, manipulation, greed and dogmatism. It’s most comfortable when feeding at the trough, which is why cities and countries vying for the Games feel required to shower gifts on committee members, and bow and scrape for the honor of playing host.

Still, the Spectator article revealing terms of London’s agreement, seem a trifle startling to even the most cynical of Olympic observers.

For one, London must provide the IOC and the “Olympic Family” (i.e. staff and officials) with 40,000 hotel rooms for the entire period of the Games. IOC elite are guaranteed 1,800 rooms in four or five-star hotels.

The 40,000 rooms do not include the athletes, who will live in an $800 million Olympic village being built for them. Nor do they include spectators to the Games, who may have to stay in lodgings 50 miles from London.

Included in the contract are 500 air conditioned limousines to carry officials, complete with uniformed chauffeurs, who will be guaranteed traffic-free speed lanes.

London was awarded the 2012 Games in 2005. Included in the contract are measures to deter what they call “ambush marketing,” which includes advertising or using the Games for promotional purposes without paying the IOC.

This includes billboard advertising, bus advertising, airport advertising. It does not yet include journalists writing about the Games, but you can be assured that if there was a way this could be done, it would be done. Especially for scribblers who might criticize the 115-member IOC.

Also in the contract is the right . .  .nay, the duty . .  . of customs officials to confiscate non-official Olympic paraphernalia that’s not approved by the IOC: “. Customs officers, instead of searching for heroin or child pornography, may end up targeting fake Olympics T-shirts.”

Also, spectators at the Games “must not wear clothes or accessories with commercial messages other than the manufacturers’ brand name.” If that dictum is enforced, it’s hard not to imagine all sorts of hell being raised by victims.

In other words, a spectator wearing a football jersey may be required to remove it, or be denied entrance to the stands. Wow!

At every ceremony during the Games, the official Olympic flag must be more prominently displayed than any other flag, including the Union Jack. How will that wash with Britons? But it’s what London agreed to, in order to get the Games.

What really offends the Spectator is that since French is the second language of the IOC, “billboards and pageantry shall (also) be in French,” which is interpreted to mean “we are required to plaster our capital city with thousands of posters in French.” (London beat out Paris for the 2012 Games.)

Considering what London had to agree to for the 2012 Games, it’s perhaps Britain’s good fortune that the groveling by Prince William, Prime Minister David Cameron, and British footballer extraordinaire  David Beckham, failed to land England the 2018 World Cup tournament.

England got only two of 22 votes and was eliminated in the first round. Russia getting the 2018 World Cup may be good news, since FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) is another of those IOC-like gangs that relish the good life and govern like dictators.

http://www.londonolympics2012.com/