Going the distance?

When the Olympic flame was extinguished at the end of the Paralympic Games and athletes took their medals back home to all four corners of the world, attention turned to delivering on the promise to “inspire a generation” and taking a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a lasting legacy.

But now the Olympic Stadium lies empty and parts of the Olympic Park are being dismantled, how serious are brands about salvaging a legacy of better public health?

Sponsor McDonald’s has admitted to Marketing Week that it is working towards “no specific targets” for improving health through future Olympic marketing initiatives, while Cadbury says its plans are “still a work in progress”. Coca-Cola points to an existing long-term partnership with children’s sport charity StreetGames as its main contribution to a legacy of health and fitness, while Adidas says the 50 adiZone outdoor gyms that have already been built since 2008 are its legacy.

McDonald’s vice-president of UK marketing Alistair Macrow points to the fact that the fast food chain ran several promotions before the Games and has an ongoing project called KickStart to fund football clubs and constantly reviews its menu options for nutritional value (see Case Study, below).

“In the run-up to London 2012, our ‘Mascotathon’ Happy Meal promotion saw us give out millions of activity toys that encouraged children to get active through play. We followed this with a second Olympic Happy Meal promotion, available during Games time, which gave children access to high-quality grassroots sports in their local area. Each Happy Meal box featured a free sport session voucher for children to get out and try one of seven Olympic sports.”

Other sponsors mention even fewer specific legacy plans that could take immediate advantage of this summer’s high levels of interest around the Olympics and Paralympics. On behalf of official treat provider Cadbury, Tony Bilsborough, head of corporate affairs at parent company Kraft Foods, says: “Cadbury never linked its sponsorship of London 2012 to either sports participation encouragement or diet and lifestyle. From the very beginning, our sponsorship was solely tied to encouraging communities up and down the land to have fun.”

In a separate response, Kraft Foods head of UK communications Josephine Bradley says its legacy objectives are still being worked on “although we are hoping to continue our association with the British Paralympic Association”. Answering Marketing Week’s enquiries during the Paralympics, she adds: “We are going to take stock when everything’s over and plan next steps from there.”

But the opportunity for sponsors’ marketing to capitalise on current enthusiasm will not last forever. Marc Woods, who has won 12 Paralympic swimming medals including four golds and who commentated on London 2012 for BBC Radio 5 Live, argues that it is crucial to “strike while the iron is hot” while people still feel the afterglow of sporting success. He says: “The sponsors definitely have a responsibility to not simply let this fade away.”

Woods says that the UK needs to maintain the momentum of positivity that the public currently feels about sport. If brands and the media don’t show a commitment towards sustaining the sudden interest in disability sport thanks to the Paralympics, then it will be forgotten quickly, he adds (see Viewpoint, below).

“It would be lovely to see brands picking up the Paralympic athletes post-Games in the same way they used them pre-Games,” he says.

New research into young people’s attitudes to health and fitness, seen exclusively by Marketing Week, suggests that doing so would indeed resonate with consumers. Athletes, rather than footballers for example, are currently the sportspeople that 11- to 18-year-olds admire most, according to the study by ResearchBods, which surveyed 1,000 children before and after the Olympics.

The proportion favouring athletes jumped from 16 per cent in June to 26 per cent in August. Over the same period, footballers fell drastically in their estimations, mentioned by only 7 per cent after the Olympics, compared with 15 per cent before.

Yet that is not all that changed in between the two surveys. Since the Olympic Games closing ceremony on 12 August, young people have also been inspired by the Games to get more involved in athletic activities.

Paralympic sponsor Sainsbury’s aims to get 20 million more children into sport by 2020 and since 2005 has also given out £115m in funding for equipment and activities to make young people more active

Before the event, 32 per cent said they intended to get generally fitter as a result of the Olympic influence, but this has since risen to more than 56 per cent. And 30 per cent now say they are determined to train harder at a sport they already play, compared with 21 per cent who said the same before the Games began.

Girls have been influenced more strongly than boys, according to the data, but fewer girls say they were already playing sport before the Games. Those at the younger end of the 11-18 age range were more likely already to be participating.

ResearchBods director Robin Hilton says: “For a lot of campaigns that target young people and try to get them involved in things, awareness levels are quite good. You can make people aware of things, but to get young people to actually change their behaviour is really difficult. This research seems to imply that young people who aren’t involved in sport want to get fitter. That is usually really hard to achieve.”

Some of the sponsors do have specific marketing plans in place for turning this signal of intent into actual sporting participation. Paralympic sponsor Sainsbury’s aims to get 20 million more children into sport by 2020 and since 2005 has also given out £115m in funding for equipment and activities to make young people more active. Last week, it also announced further plans for ensuring that the legacy of the Paralympics is embedded in the UK for years to come (see Case Study, below).

Consumer goods manufacturer Procter & Gamble – like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, a worldwide sponsor of the IOC – has also committed to spending $25m (£15.7m) worldwide over the course of its Olympic partnership, which runs until 2020, on creating a sporting legacy from the Games. James Williams, of P&G corporate communications, says this money is being channelled into a variety of projects around the world (see Case Study, below).

He adds: “The main legacy plan that we have globally is an investment in youth sport. It is derived from the ‘Proud sponsor of mums’ campaign and everything we did around the Olympics.

“The company asked mothers: ‘if we were going to help them with our legacy programme, what would that look like?’ They told us youth sport is the biggest thing that we could do to help. They said that what gets their kids off to a good start in life is access to sport – sports training, facilities and equipment.”

London 2012’s official bank, Lloyds Banking Group, has committed to running its National School Sports Week with the Youth Sport Trust again in 2013, seeking to add to the 9 million children it says have taken part since 2009. In 2012, schools were encouraged to stage their own version of the Games. The latest announcement was made during the Olympics, endorsed by six-time cycling gold medal winner Sir Chris Hoy.

Hoy pointed out at the launch: “I had the opportunity to play a wide variety of sports at school, as did a lot of our Team GB and Paralympics GB heroes, and I know that in order to motivate more children it’s about providing opportunities and fun experiences to keep them engaged.”

Just as ResearchBods’ survey has found the Olympics have generated enthusiasm for sport, Lloyds own research indicates that when sponsors provide these kinds of opportunities for young people to participate they take immediate inspiration. Lloyds found in 2012 that 64 per cent wanted to play more sport after the week was over.

Other elements of Lloyds’ legacy were still in their planning stage when Marketing Week interviewed its head of sponsorship Gordon Lott in July, ahead of the Olympics, but he suggested that social media could become a new forum for the company to give legacy activities greater attention. The main focus centres on community projects, of which sports investment is only a part of the £85m that the bank spent last year. He said: “I can see a situation where those become much more prominent on our Facebook page.”

Taking an entirely different view of the Olympic sponsors’ legacy responsibilities, Innocent’s approach is to assert the innate health benefits of its products. Though the juice and smoothie maker is majority-owned by Coca-Cola and gains its Olympic association through that corporate relationship, the two brands have separate operations and marketing strategies.

Other sponsors mention even fewer specific legacy plans that could take immediate advantage of this summer’s high levels of interest around the Olympics and Paralympics

But the initiatives that Innocent already runs relating to children’s health are unlikely to be given an Olympic slant in the future, according to marketing director Douglas Lamont, because the products that featured in its sponsorship activities and which were sold in the Olympic Park during the Games weren’t those targeted at children.

Lamont goes even further, claiming that Innocent’s most effective contribution to an Olympic legacy of improved health would be simply to sell more products: “From a kids’ nutrition perspective, the best job we can do is get our products to the most kids possible. The Government is supportive as well, because we deliver a healthy drink to kids, which is why we can sell into schools and advertise on kids’ TV. It’s about finding ways to encourage kids to drink more smoothies and drinks from us.”

He also explains that the most important marketing job Innocent has to do to in order to improve diets is to ensure that it provides products that are healthy, appeal to children and are affordable for their parents. Beyond that, Lamont suggests that its efforts would involve more of the kinds of projects it was already involved in.

“What we’ve got to do is a bit of education – part of our previous campaigns has been education for mums. On kids’ TV it’s more about encouraging a sense of fun, but on mainstream TV it’s about explaining that this is a good way to get fruit into kids.

“We’ve also done various booklets on healthy eating and pushed those out through Mumsnet – tips for healthy lunchboxes and how to help your kids. It’s not just about putting a smoothie in it, but about what other foods to have in their lunchboxes. Partnerships like that are part of the programme of work that we have.”

But few of the other Olympic sponsors are in Innocent’s enviable position of being able to argue that their products could themselves leave a legacy of better health. And even for Innocent, education alone might not make the critical difference in turning Olympic inspiration into healthy eating.

According to ResearchBods, the majority of children in its survey already have at least some understanding of what a good diet involves. Asked to score how much they know about healthy eating on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is nothing at all, only 3 per cent score themselves below 3. But for the majority of young people, this knowledge alone does not appear to be enough to spur them to action, since 64 per cent say they know what is required for a healthy diet but do not always choose to eat that way.

Against that less-than-promising statistic stands the finding that 94 per cent of those surveyed watched at least some Olympics coverage. The UK might never again have a platform with the same level of reach from which to launch an effective campaign to improve public health.

The Games have undoubtedly had the desired effect of inspiring a generation, but the sponsors still have a job to do to ensure the legacy lasts.