Defining a brand with Mo & Bolt

You've got to hand it to Virgin Media, less than one week after Mo's second gold medal win and his subsequent poses with Bolt on the track, i'm confronted with this in the Saturday paper (a few weeks back now).

Mo & Bolt deliver 'fast' positioning for Virgin Media

I love it for all sorts of different reasons. It stops you in your tracks, it's funny, it builds on the existing 'keep up' idea and it captures the spirit of the moment - just like the Virgin brands always do.

I've read that Virgin Media stumped up around £500k for Mo. He certainly deserves it but will Virgin Media get value for money out of it? I think they will. By signing two such iconic athletes in such an important year for the sport when it's at the forefront of the nation's conscience, it feels like a turning point for Virgin's position in the category. After years of clever copy driven DM slagging off Sky and claiming all sorts of advantages, this concerted effort (and investment) to own speed, irrespective of what competitors do, feels really powerful.

Carving out a positioning tends to be the hard bit - will people remember it by next week? - but i think Virgin has done remarkably well attempting that in 2012. If this year's memorable campaign leads to Virgin being known as the 'one for speed' for subsequent years to come, then it's done its job and it's money well spent.

Still feeling proud to be British?

Four weeks have now passed since Danny blew us away with sheep, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Mr Bean, the NHS, Bond and countless other emblems of these shores.

It felt good to be British, even better than that, it felt okay to say that it felt good to be British, we knew half the world wouldn't get it and that made it even better, even more British. I watched it in a pub, i've never witnessed people cheering Mary Poppins before.

So what now? Well, four weeks on, if that feeling is on the wane, help is at hand through a nationwide project that anyone can take part in as a thank you to Danny and a chance to browse countless Tumblr images that bring back that friday night feeling all over again.

A good friend of mine, Mr Jim Thornton (@lordplumpton) came up with the idea and here's an excerpt from his recent article in the Huffington Post telling you about it...

... it made me more happy and proud and optimistic than anything I could ever remember. It represented all of the things which make me proud to be British, and none of the things that make me ashamed.

So just as Danny Boyle gave us a very personal gift, the memory of which will last a lifetime, I'd like to give him a personal gift in a similar vein from all of us. A book containing photographs of each person's interpretation of what makes this isle wondrous to them.
 
It's going to be called 'It's From Everyone'. We kicked it off via Instagram and Twitter three weeks ago and so far have over 1,212 photos posted on Instagram, and many more submitted via Twitter.

You can see a lot of them here at http://www.thiswondrousisle.co.uk/

But if it's to truly be from everyone, we need everyone to contribute.
It couldn't be easier: simply tag a photo that sums up what makes this isle wondrous to you with #thiswondrousisle on Instagram, on Flickr, or on Twitter and we'll do the rest.

And of course, if you like the idea, please, please tell your friends and spread the word.
It's a daunting task we've set ourselves, but we like to think that if Danny Boyle showed us anything, he showed us there's no limit to what we can achieve if we put our minds to it.

(you can read the full article here)

Here's my effort from 6:30am yesterday morning, get stuck in.

Molly the bear appreciating #thiswondrousisle

Encouraging adoption of contactless payment

Nice bit of trial driving activity between HSBC & EAT encouraging use of contactless payment. Only cards that were used with a decent amount of frequency arrived with this EAT offer at the bottom of the letter supplying your new card. Contrast that with Barclays that recently sent me an uninspiring 6 page pamphlet with their new 'contactless' card with no incentive to do anything more than bin the material and carry on using chip & pin.

HSBC encouraging adoption of contactless payment
through EAT trial driving offer

The offer made me try the technology, go out of my way to visit an EAT outlet and also recognise just how quick and simple the payment mechanism is. That said, the terminal i used (below) had a malfunctioning LED display. When you're introducing new payment technology such as this and people are highly sceptical of fraud and overpayment, you need to be able to reassure and build trust, so it's vital the displays tell you exactly what you've paid - otherwise customers hang around for another 15 seconds waiting for a receipt which kind of defeats the object of the technology in the first place. 

Malfunctioning display does nothing to
build confidence in new payment mechanism

10 observations on my Olympic experience

After being lucky enough to attend three fantastic days of Olympic action, i thought I'd jot down a few observations...

1. The Brand Police really did stop at nothing

How many people honestly know what on earth 'fruit cup no.1' is? And if you do, would you spend £10 on it? (Well, sadly my wife did)

Any one for Fruit Cup No1?

Independent stall holders at Eton Dorney cover up their 'highly contentious' names...

2. We need more wild flower meadows everywhere.

Wild flower meadow at the velodrome

3. Advertising in an 'Olympic' station is an utter utter waste of money.

LOCOG did a great job with high visibility signage and hundreds of volunteers - especially at Stratford. The result was that everyone knew where they were going and no one even noticed the McDonald's advertising everywhere.

No time or space for McDonald's ads at Stratford Station

Contrast that with Gillette who covered 3 tower blocks on the way to the venue itself - much more effective in gaining standout, and delivering huge impact.

4. The crowds really were fantastic as this wobbly video testifies


5. The military ought to run the airports

I underwent 3 security checks across my three visits, all fast, seamless, pleasant affairs - if only the military could take over airport security when they've finished at the Olympics.

6. The BBC was hit & miss

While their online and mobile offerings go from strength to strength, the prime time presenting and pundit teams leave a lot to be desired. The biggest criticism has to be the lack of expert breadth. If a presenter and pundit know nothing about a sport they would do better to say nothing at all and refer to a report, than engage in outdated, uninformed, pub chat. Two examples...

Gary: Do you think the final day conditions suited Ben Ainslie in the sailing?

Sean (ex hockey player): Well i don't know a thing about sailing but i think....

And even worse, following the Dressage success...

Gaby: So our first gold ever in dressage...

Steve Cram & Chris Boardman: Yeah but home advantage has played a big part for us there, not having to transport the horses to say Beijing, i presume that was a massive advantage.

Now i don't know a huge amount about dressage but then I'm not being paid to talk about it on BBC1. What i do know is that Germany have won the last 7 Olympic Dressage events.The last 7! Half of which were on the other side of the world, so credit where it's due - the Dressage team managed something unprecedented, regardless of the transport arrangements.



7. Empty seats can only be avoided when sponsorship contracts are agreed

Empty seats at the swimming

Alright it wasn't quite as bad as that picture above suggests, we were there very early. But on that particular night, the night of the 100m freestyle final, there were a block of 20 seats left in front of us. Five minutes into the action around 40% were filled by guests of Lloyds Bank (according to their lanyards), the rest were wasted. It's not just Lloyds' fault. Games organisers need to wake up to two key issues. 1. If someone gets something for free, they value it less than someone that paid a tenner, or £95 quid for the same thing. 2.  If a company spends £100m sponsoring a global event, they want value for money, and for them that means (among other things) quantity of tickets. More, more, more, despite the fact that a decent % of those extra tickets that they recieve will be for a morning session that no one wants to attend - especially when gifted them for free.

A further caveat to that, is that the IOC 'family' receive 50% more tickets than sponsors (12% versus 8%) which must amount to well over 1 million tickets - is that really necessary?


8. Coke & BP experiences looked impressive, albeit i decided not to queue for 45 minutes to experience them

BP park pavilion

Coke's move to the beat pavillion

9. The quality of merchandise was a bit of a let down, but that didn't stop the longest queue in the park forming.


10. The Orbit looks best at night time, when you can't really see it.

I know the LOCOG budget didn't put it there, and i do think the park needs the height of such a tower, it's just a shame that the Orbit looks like such a mess and by all accounts, doesn't provide a great view when you're up there due to the fully enclosed nature of the public areas.

The public viewing deck and access points are all you notice when you look at this structure, compared to say the Eiffel tower where they are neatly hidden away. Why has one of the World's most successful artists had to cave in to Health & Safety? If Danny got away with it regarding those sheep, surely Anish could have managed it for a structure that could be there for decades to come?

Saturday night: an Olympic sized shop window

Last Saturday night was a rather good one for me, for 80,000 people in Stratford and for a gazillion people watching on TV all over the country.

Jess and Greg were great and Mo Farah's race was the greatest bit of live sport I've ever watched. Hairs on the back of your neck don't even come close to the feeling everyone had up and down the country when he hit the front still with 400m to go.

Everyday we've seen wall to wall coverage of athletes achieving unimaginable feats of athleticism or - as they put it - letting their team and their country down under the shear weight of expectation that comes with 4 years of training for one single first round heat.

Having watched the first week's events, it turns out we're pretty handy at a lot of sports that are still effectively minority activities nationwide and in the large part ignored by school curriculums.

But it's not just the talent of our athletes that's impressive, it's the way they conduct themselves. They're humble. When was the last time that word appeared in a sentence alongside the name of a premiership footballer? Many of these athletes are supported by lottery funding, some have other jobs and all are making the ultimate sacrifice over four long years for their moment to shine.

This two weeks is the ultimate shop window for these sports. The beauty of the Olympics is that it's greater than the sum of it's parts. Minority sports will go back to being minority sports by October and only the most impressive of gold medal hauls will live on in the memory. So it feels all the more important to take advantage of this window of opportunity and encourage adults as well as kids to try something new. Yesterday's Times newspaper carried a small column on trying cycling, boxing, volleyball and hockey. Each obviously have their own organisations and 'give it a go' programs and while that's right for those that really seek it out, it doesn't feel like it's made easy enough for the majority of people.

Here's what i'd do...

1. Find our answer to 'Jamie Oliver' to become a highly vocal sporting figurehead in lobbying the government - backed by the media - over broader (and more competitive) sporting opportunities in schools. And get a debate happening this year.
2. Post games, run an Olympic led comms push around getting into these sports, utilising the current 2012 website that everyone is familiar with to maximise enquiries before disseminating to individual sporting bodies
3. Harness the spirit of volunteering and club ethos to provide opportunities for activity all over the country
4. Pressure official sponsors into investing in equipment to aid local clubs as part of the legacy
5. Focus on kids but don't exclude adults, if recent statistics are anything to go by, they're almost in greater need of exercise and making it fun is more likely to make participation happen 
6. And finally, do it quickly. It feels like we have until the end of the Paralympics before the euphoria starts to recede and our new found love of volleyball goes into hibernation for another 4 years