Outdoor firms team up to protect Glasgow 2014 sponsors
Glasgow 2014 organisers are working with a host of outdoor media owners to protect the value of its sponsorship deals by minimising the risk of ambush marketing around the sporting event.
Media owners JCDecaux, CBS Outdoor, Clear Channel, Forrest Media, Primesight SPD Media, BlowUp, Ocean Outdoor, Ubiquitous and T4 Media have agreed to work with the games organisers to see outdoor ad space in and around the venues offered up to official sponsors of Glasgow 2014 during the tournament.
BP, Emirates, Longines, SSE and Virgin Media are listed as official sponsors of the games scheduled to kick off next year Ty Speer, deputy CEO of Glasgow 2014, says: “It is incredibly important for us to keep a consistency across all our sites and to protect the rights of our sponsors, whose support is vital to the success of the Games.
“This collaboration between the key outdoor advertisers will ensure that can happen.”
Meanwhile Mike Baker, CEO for the Outdoor Media Centre,says: “If the London 2012 Olympics gave us an important lesson, it is that outdoor is a great medium for allowing sponsors to own a city with large scale visual branding.”
Last year the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) employed almost 300 staff to crack down on attempted geurilla marketing stunts within half a kilometre of Olympic sites with the power to issue fines of up to £20,000 for brands infringing official guidelines.
The Games’ organising committee Locog had also warned businesses not to use terms from a list of banned words that includes “gold”, “sponsors” and “London”.
Olympic chiefs have continuously stressed that without the restrictions in place sponsors including Coca-Cola, Samsung and Cadbury would not have invested in the event, which raised almost £700m “in a very difficult environment”.
The stringent application of the rules drew criticism from both non-sponsor brands and the public alike. However, they did help inspire some shrewd manoeuvres such as Beats by Dr Dre issuing headsets to Team GB athletes achieving extensive media coverage throughout the tournament.
