The Big Interview – Chris Katsuleres

Sportindustry.biz speaks exclusively to Chris Katsuleres, Director of Olympic Marketing and Sports Programmes at GE, about its role as a global sponsor and sustainability parter of the London 2012 Games.

Can you tell us a bit about how you are involved in the Olympic Games?

Absolutely, I handle all the Olympic marketing and also marketing for all of our sports programmes. The Olympics is our focal point. We have been involved with the Games since Torino in 2006, and in addition we also work with the PGA Tour and have just announced a deal in F1 with Team Lotus. So we have those three as our primary sponsorship programmes.

The Olympics really was our first sponsorship in the company’s 130-year history. The sponsorships was born out of a long term history that GE had with NBC which, up until last year, was part of GE. NBC has broadcasted the Olympic Games in the US since the early 1960’s, we took on the corporate sponsorship for a couple of reasons, first and foremost was when you think about all of the infrastructure requirements for a host city like Beijing or London, that’s a tremendous opportunity for us.

Secondarily, it’s a great brand building platform for us, particularly outside the US, where the brand, while being well known and has good equity, is known more for white goods and our lighting.

The Olympic platform has been really great for us to show our infrastructure capabilities. It gives us a chance to showcase what we do from a power generation standpoint or a water standpoint and what we do within our healthcare technology business, using the Olympics to tell those stories.

GE is the Sustainability Partner for the London 2012 Games, as you were in Beijing in 2008, are you treating next year’s edition any differently?

Each Games are different, they present different problems and different opportunities, certainly we learn as well, helping us to grow our activation efforts. We’ve done different things in Vancouver compared with Beijing before that, and we will do different things in London compared with Beijing.

However, going back to core-objectives of the wider sponsorship and what works for us – that hasn’t really changed from its inception.

And what does the sponsorship bring to GE?

For Beijing we participated in over 400 infrastructure projects so there was a strong business building opportunity and we have a number of projects in London across virtually all Olympic venues.

There will also be a cross-section of GE business lines involved, from power distribution, to energy, lighting, water, healthcare – we’ll have touchpoints across all of those. That is the primary reason for why we are involved, we are really focused on what we’re doing and helping the Olympic body, working with LOCOG to deliver a greener Games.

We also have this extra knowledge because we have done it before – this will be our fourth Games so we can bring a lot of insight into what needs to be done and how best to go about building all the requirements that a host city has to do.

And do you think it will be easier this time round with your experience of three Games already?

We certainly have a lot of best practice, each time we have gone through a Games we’ve learned things that make us better partners for each of the host cities, and we can bring things in that we’ve learnt along the way to help kickstart the process and add more value to the partners here in London.

GE works all around the world, and the Olympic Games is one of the biggest competitions on Earth, do you think this global comparison suits your partnership?

Certainly, you’re absolutely right, GE is a global company and the Olympics is one of the few things that is truly worldwide in nature from a sports property standpoint. So it works very well for us. We activate the partnership, not just in the host city, it is a global activation for us across the various GE businesses.

Moving on from London 2012, we have Rio next in 2016, what are GE’s plans from an Olympic marketing perspective?

Well our partnership with the IOC goes through London so obviously we’re looking at how we potentially want to extend that partnership, and you’ll hear more on that over the next few weeks.

I think Rio presents a tremendous opportunity when you think about what is going to happen down there from an infrastructure perspective over the next five years, with the Olympics in Rio and World Cup – it lines up very well with our capabilities and what we can do to support them over the next five years.

You are also an elite partner of the British Triathlon Federation, how did that come about?

It’s been a great relationship, we have really enjoyed our partnership with the British Triathlon Federation. We’ve done this type of thing in the past where we’ve set up local NGB deals in specific markets and it’s worked really well.

One thing that really stood out for us with the British Triathlon Federation is that it’s such a mass participation sport, with so many people actively involved from a recreational standpoint.

At an elite level we have seen some really strong potential for medals and we have high hopes for a lot of athletes next year. We saw the chance to align ourselves with a growing sport in the UK and, on a global level, a very talented team.

It’s also been great for us internally, we do a lot of engagement with our employees, introducing them to the sport of triathlon. Its been amazing to see the uptake that we’ve had with people who would have never thought it possible to do a triathlon and I would count myself in that bracket, but now their getting out there and doing it, getting active, getting healthy, and they’ve really taken to the sport.

And finally, you held the Olympic torch in Vancouver, how was that experience?

Yes I had the pleasure of carrying the torch in Vancouver, and it was one of those lasting memories that I will always have, it was very special. I’ve worked on the Olympics since 1998 so it was a fantastic moment.

We have a number of slots we will be making available to employees, because as I know, it is one of those truly special things, and for employees of GE UK to represent our company and the UK will be amazing.

To have that moment to carry the Olympic flame – it will be very special for a handful of employees that we will select over the coming months.