Easterbrook: Ambush Marketing Unavoidable
Speaking exclusively at the Sport Industry Breakfast Club Steve Easterbrook, UK executive vice president and global chief brand officer at McDonald’s, has admitted that ambush marketing will be unavoidable at the London 2012 Olympics.
Said Easterbrook: ‘It’s going to be a mess, people are not going to remember precisely who is meant to be doing what…so what we are going to do is just run good restaurants and play our part in hosting a great Games.’
McDonald’s is an official sponsor to the Games and Easterbrook says that, whilst he expects ambush techniques to happen, McDonald’s will: ‘…protect our rights, I can assure you that.’
‘But come the Games we can’t help what is going on outside the Olympic Park and we wont be rushing around checking up on everyone, we will concentrate on running good restaurants.’
However, McDonald’s is likely to reap the rewards of its sponsorship as Easterbrook says that: ‘In the main restaurant in the Olympic Park, every hour will be three times as busy as our current busiest outlet in the UK…around 14m meals will be sold, of which a McDonald’s meal will be one in five.’
Easterbrook also said that McDonalds wouldn’t be expanding its successful football coaching programme into other sports ahead of the Games.
‘The reality is there isn’t (a possibility of expanding the programme) because we couldn’t get the scale of resources behind it…when you multiply up the scale that is required we just wouldn’t be able to do the equivalent job.’
However, he did elaborate on McDonald’s plans to activate the current deal with the Football Association: ‘Im terms of using modern technology we want to use websites and social media to bring grassroots football to life, allowing the clubs and the coaches to interact in a different way and get a closer bond with McDonald’s and the FA.’
Easterbrook added that despite McDonald’s being involved in many sports that: ‘Frankly we don’t sell that much as result of the sponsorships, I could spend the money more effectively on a promotion, but it allows us to connect the influence we have at a national level into local communities.’
Despite being an official sponsor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Easterbrook added that McDonald’s in the UK lost around 5-6% of sales during the tournament because: ‘Everyone stays in on a match-day and watches the game.’
However, Easterbrook said that one of the lasting legacies that McDonald’s produced in South Africa was helping the South African Football Association (SAFA) with its development programme: ‘They came over here (SAFA) to see how we run our coaching programme, and we gave them advice. Then we went over there with our ambassador Geoff Hurst and helped them kick-start a similar initiative that is now going very strong.’
