The Big Interview – Mark Zimmer

Sportindustry.biz speaks exclusively to Mark Zimmer, Head of Olympic Brand Alliance at Westfield Stratford City, about the process of preparing for an Olympic Games, and concerns over ambush marketing.

Just over a year to go until the Games, how is the process going?

It’s going very well, we are running ahead of where we expected to be at this point in time, we only have two sites left out of a total inventory of over 20 sites. There are two rooftops left and a couple of floors of office space, so that is going really well.

Now we are beginning to turn our attention to how we can engage. The majority of our sites have been taken up by the Olympic family, and we’re now in our last phase so with just a couple of sites left we are now engaging in the wider community, not necessarily sponsors, to pick up the last sites that we have.

So yes, to answer your question it’s going very well.

Obviously you’re extremely busy at the moment, arguably your busiest, what will your involvement be during the actual Olympic Games?

I think whereas a lot of sites sales consist of selling a space and saying ‘there you go, enjoy’, we can’t do that for all sorts of reasons. In terms of what’s being built on our roofspace, it is not just a case of sticking a tent up there – we want our tenants to do interesting and exciting things in the mall. There’s such a wow factor around this site that what we can’t do is do anything other than adding value to the Olympic Games and not to detract from it.

There are also quite a lot of logistical issues that need to be overcome, for example, we sit inside the vehicle lockdown so there are supply and catering logistics.

Once we complete the sales process I have a delivery team, which is about four sizes bigger then my sales team. We place a huge importance on ensuring that we deliver on what we sell. We won’t walk away, we will very much walk our tenants through the process.

You mentioned the ‘wow’ factor during the Games, what are your plans post-Games?

Well the ongoing development effectively pauses for 2012, so when the Games are over work carries on, which is why we have this space to begin with. The reason why all of our rooftops are so suitable for corporate hospitality is that the majority of our rooftops are intended to be built on after the Games. One of our prime sites will be the location for a nine-story office block so it’s got a lot of load bearing capacity, which is why we can have some pretty substantial structures on the roof, and have easy access to them.

To answer your question simply, it’s very much an Olympic overlay. Talking to a number of our sponsors we have also started to discuss the sustainability issue, possibly with the structures being donated to schools, or repeat usage somewhere – so they won’t simply be trashed.

Regarding your work with the Olympic sponsors, how is that going?

Great! I used to be at the BOA so I know a lot of the sponsors already, so it’s been great to be able to carry on those relationships, it’s going really well.

Of the sites that we have sold, more than 50% are sold to the Olympic family, either sponsors or National Olympic Committees, and we will be looking forward to making announcements on those relatively soon.

A lot of sponsors have shown interest, it’s not a slam dunk though, there are reasons to come here and there are reasons not to come here, but it’s gone very well. We are looking at working with sponsors in so many different ways and we have another team to deliver our side of the relationship throughout.

We recently had a massive activation in the Westfield mall for Coke, who launched their search for their Olympic torchbearers, so although my focus is within what are they doing in Stratford during the Olympic Games, as the relationship evolves we can say ‘look, there’s much more value we can add to you if we work together as business partners going forward’.

Even the clients that don’t use our assets during the Games, I’m sure we will develop a relationship.

As we begin to announce whose doing what it will become clear that we’ve been working very hard to develop wider relationships.

Finally, one interesting thing that will surround everything concerning sponsorship during the Games is ambush marketing, what do you plan to do about that?

We have worked very hard with LOCOG. For both organizations to gain operational certainty they need us and we need them, and when I came here a couple of years ago I said to the business we really need to engage with these guys and not rely on a series of construction led contracts, but actually talk to them about what we’re going to do – as well as what they do and don’t want us to do.

I get on well with LOCOG and I’ve been very candid with them, I’ve explained simply, this is what we are going to do on these sites and they’ve said okay, and that they would appreciate it if everything is offered to the Olympic family first to make sure they have every opportunity to take the space, which we did.

Then we said we have some space left, as well as some internal events space that is not governed by any signage or other restrictions – therefore a non-sponsor can do experiential activity and activations during the Olympic Games inside the internal areas of our shopping mall. That then, understandably, creates concerns for LOCOG, reasonably enough because there’s never been anything like that before.

We said though that we are going to do this, there will be non-sponsors using our facilities to offer hospitality to their guests, so we sat down and figured out the rules on that one as well. There are signage restrictions but they are the same for everybody.

So to make things easier we said to them ‘tell us the criteria’, exactly what we can and can’t do with sponsors and non-sponsors and then give us a guarantee that as long as we satisfy those criteria that there will be no objections from you (LOCOG).

It was a lengthy process but we got there.

We have a few hoops to jump through, but provided we jump through the right ones then we have a cask-iron guarantee from LOCOG that we are ok.

I’ve said a number of times in the past that I don’t want Westfield Stratford City to be the ambush marketing capital of the world. We’re not here to spoil the Games, we’re here to add value, but we do have commercial objectives as well, so those two objectives need to be integrated very clearly. 

What I can say to non-sponsors is that if you came and activated here during the Games I would say you are less likely to be challenged for ambush marketing by LOCOG then anywhere else because we can say exactly what you can and can’t do and that if you satisfy the criteria, then LOCOG has effectively pre-approved your activity.

So you’re saying that as long as a non-Olympic affiliated company activates in a certain way, in a certain place, they could do so?

Yes, in a certain way and place they could activate in our mall and we can guarantee that the activation will not breach ambush marketing regulations. The key thing obviously is do not associate yourself with the Games. We can guide all of our tenants through all of the signage and other restrictions.

So am I worried ambush marketing now? No, because I’m going to make sure it does not happen, but I have in the past been very worried about it and I’ve worked very hard with LOCOG to make sure it will not be a problem.

I would like to reiterate what I said earlier, we are not here to spoil the party, we are here to really add value to the London 2012 Olympic Games.