By Chris Robinson
Since the Vancouver Olympics, spirits have remained high among the Canadian snow sports organizations with the prospects looking very good for an even bigger medal haul in Sochi this winter. With nine podium results just this past weekend in World Cup ski and snowboard events, the Canadian teams are feeling pretty good with just over a month to go before the Sochi Opening Ceremonies.
The stars seemed to align with the Vancouver Games – everyone rallying behind amateur sport in Canada towards continued success down the road. However, an anticipated uptick in corporate sponsorship has not materialized leaving many of the sports organizations wondering why?
The fact is that a waning interest level is quite common post a domestic Olympic games and the experts would point to a number of factors in this reversal of fortunes. One of the most significant being what might be referred to as a sponsorship ‘hangover’ after the bonanza leading up to Vancouver. Companies like to continually refresh their strategies and with so much being directed towards winter sport in the years leading up to 2010, it is understandable that the focus has shifted to other opportunities.
One of the biggest players in the sport sponsorship business in Canada today is a company called The TwentyTen Group (TTG). The TwentyTen Group was incorporated on June 1, 2010 in Vancouver, B.C., founded by Andrea J. Shaw and several key members from the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games’ (VANOC) sponsorship and marketing division. While with VANOC, Shaw held the role of Vice President of Sponsorship Sales and Marketing, and led the team that generated a record-setting $760 million in domestic sponsorship revenue. Shaw was soon joined by Bill Cooper, who was responsible for the industry-leading commercial rights management protocol implemented by VANOC, and now co-leads the firm as the Chief Operating Partner. Respected in the industry for developing strong partnerships with clients and transformative, new approaches to sponsorship and marketing, Shaw and Cooper quickly built up a strong roster of clients, an ever-growing team of industry-leading staff, and expanded into Toronto in 2011. The TwentyTen Group continues to grow with national and international partners and clients.
Those clients include a number of Canada’s highest profile sport organizations, the Canadian Olympic Committee among them. Most recently, TTG has partnered with the seven Olympic snow sport disciplines – Alpine Canada, Canadian Freestyle Ski Association, Cross Country Canada, Canada Snowboard, Ski Jumping Canada, Nordic Combined Canada and Biathlon Canada – with plans to set a new course for generating sponsorship deals for competitive skiing and snowboarding.
The seven snow sport disciplines have traditionally operated completely independent of one another. This effectively made them competitors in a small and crowded Canadian sport sponsorship marketplace. However, the sponsorship doldrums that have set in since 2010, and the financial challenges that have arisen for most, led the snow sports to come together and, as TTG puts it, ‘to create a marketing platform that leverages their unique attributes and amplifies their reach through one voice’.
TTG’s first challenge has been to find common ground between the snow sports and a way to tell their story with a single voice. What has emerged from many months of learning and strategizing is something simply called ‘Snow Sports Canada’ – a new brand with a new story and what TTG sees as a huge opportunity. TTG highlights the opportunity in the following terms:
Canada is the land of ice and snow. While hockey is a highly competitive and cluttered landscape for marketers, Snow Sports Canada represent an uncluttered environment and refreshing alternative.
Snow Sports Canada offers an unparalleled opportunity to corporate partners to differentiate themselves, while aligning their brand with a property that captures all that it is to be Canadian.
The TwentyTen Group’s approach to building mutually beneficial partnerships is focused on identifying opportunities to build stories that leverage each brand’s objectives and connect with consumers at a deeper level. Snow Sports Canada represents a continuum of stories from playground to podium.
We all grew up playing in the snow, it’s part of what makes us Canadian and connects us to our communities nationwide.
There is some risk here with all of the sports putting a number of large eggs into one basket. But the timing is right for this move and being able to work with the team at TTG presents a great opportunity to employ leading edge thinking towards a long term solution. Like the internet changed the sharing of information around the world in a very short time, so goes the changing sponsorship landscape; multi-platform, multi-channel, multi-partner strategies are all here and now. TTG understands this and by working together with a very attentive group of snow sports leaders, they are collectively re-writing the playbook towards scoring sponsorship goals and helping to secure the financial future for Canada’s ski and snowboard athletes. ”All for one, and one for all!”
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THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH OPPORTUNITY
http://www.twentytengroup.com/the-hills-are-alive-with-opportunit/