Around the Rings Newsmaker Breakfast -- IOC, Sponsors Meet in Beijing

Editor Ed Hula, Ken Yoshida of Panasonic, Peter Foss of GE, and Johan Jervoe of McDonald's. (ATR)(ATR) Key Olympic sponsors are meeting today with IOC and BOCOG officials to discuss future plans and receive updates on Beijing Games.

The sponsors advisory group meets regularly to facilitate IOC dialogue with the 11 companies in the The Olympic Partner (TOP) Program.

“There’s an IOC meeting (Sunday) for all TOP sponsors today to discuss what’s new, what’s going forward,” Peter Foss, General Electric general manager of enterprise selling, says.

“There’s an overarching aim – our belief and desire with the IOC to protect sport, to protect the values that the Olympics represent and to protect the brand, because it’s a wonderful brand that we love to be associated with.”

Foss, Ken Yoshida, leader of Panasonic’s worldwide Olympic marketing team, and Johan Jervoe, McDonald’s corporate VP of global marketing, were the guests for the August 17 Around the Rings Newsmaker Breakfast.

The ATR Newsmaker Breakfasts present opinion-makers and leaders of the Olympic Movement in an informal, question and answer setting at the 2,000 square meter McDonald’s on the Olympic Green.

Two more programs are scheduled for August 19 and 23. The last event will feature the first joint appearance by all four cities campaigning for the 2016 Olympics.

Questions can also be emailed ahead of each event to: newsmaker@aroundtherings.com.

Here is a snapshot of the August 17 event:

Ed Hula: What has the Panasonic experience been like?

Ken Yoshida: Panasonic started this project in 2002 and our engineering team had a site visit at that time. We faced some difficulties on the engineering side but finally we managed to have a successful finish.

EH: One of Panasonic’s contributions to these Games has been the screens we see everywhere. How important is that overall to the company’s growth and product development?

KY: The large screen has now become very important. We provided 225 screens in all venues so this is our biggest supply in our Olympic history.

EH: Can you tell us a bit about the GE experience?

Peter Foss: It’s been wonderful. We announced our sponsorship in May 2003, so we’ve been coming here since then, working with the organizing committee.

Our sponsorship involves the opportunity to participate in the building of the venues. We’ve got a sales team here. We’ve helped with the design, construction and project management of the venues here in Beijing. It’s generated significant revenue for us.

Of course, NBC is a GE family member and they’re broadcasting direct to the US and the results have just been fantastic. So as a company we’re very excited and pleased and it’s been a wonderful experience for us.

EH: What kind of things are you providing to the organizing committee to help them stage these Games?

PF: You won’t see our products – as you will Panasonic products – we’re more behind the scenes. But our water filtration and water technology businesses have significant projects here.

We process all the water at national stadium for irrigation and draining. There’s the electrical infrastructure company behind the scenes, making things work with sub-station power generation and so forth.

We’re behind the scenes everywhere, whether it’s lighting, energy, water technologies and security – we’re out there. These are infrastructure opportunities for us, not only in Beijing but across the entire country.

EH: How’s the experience been for McDonald’s?

Johan Jervoe: It’s really been a long-term commitment to China. We’ve been here nearly 20 years.

And we’ve been together with the Olympics for about 40 years, so it’s those two long-term commitments that are coming together here in Beijing.

If you look at the four sites that we have on the Olympic Green, the Olympic Village and the Main Press Center, that’s part of how we’re feeding the athletes, how we are servicing the media and volunteers, and obviously feeding the spectators.

Last, not least, we have been in the market for some time and we are feeding, if you like, all the fans outside the Olympic Green, and there’s significant enjoyment in seeing our restaurants are full and people are happy about our commitment.

Beijing in 2008 is really one of the peaks so far of what I would call our commitment to the Olympics. It is in effect, probably the biggest activation we’ve seen around the world… having 1,400 McDonald’s employees from around the world coming in and being part of our Olympic champion crew program.

EH: How welcome have you, as sponsors, been made here in China?

KY: From an engineering point of view we had some communication issues. In China, documents and the language in meetings was Chinese. But finally, our local staff cooperated with the organizing committee and we established a good relationship.

EH: Japan is not far away, has your closeness to Beijing helped you as a sponsor?

KY: Yes, it has. For example, to get to Athens or Torino it took nearly one day to get there from Japan. Actually, it’s a three-hour flight from Japan to Beijing so more people are involved in this project.

EH: How much of what you provide as a sponsor is value in kind?

JJ: A proportion of what you pay in rights fees is paid in value in kind, which in our case is Big Mac, nuggets, salads and so on.

It’s just the way we calculate this – to an outsider it looks more like science. But when you’ve been around for some time, it really becomes a repeating discipline of a joint agreement and dialogue of what an organizing committee is trying to achieve on ground. This (marketing) is a discipline like sports. The last title is not as important as the next title. Marketing is about 50 percent science and 50 percent art.

PF: Construction of the venues and so on cost $42 billion, so there wasn’t much of an issue with using GE’s value in kind. With all the electrical infrastructure, lighting and water projects going on, it was used up very quickly.

In fact, we we’re quite successful way beyond value in kind and selling a significant amount of our products and services to infrastructure – you’ll see numbers reported of $700 million.

- Anthony Stavrinos, in Beijing