Eurostar brings culture and sport together to support London 2012
COUNTDOWN TO THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES
65 DAYS TO GO
Eurostar’s chief exec says why it is 2012’s international rail services provider
Q What was your brand’s primary reason for being involved with the Games?
A For us the partnership felt natural, partly because of the geography: we come into St Pancras, which will be just seven minutes away from the Olympic Park by the special Javelin service. And also it fitted very well with our objectives, which were, first, to show that London is the destination to go to and second, that you should go there by Eurostar –not just directly but in combination with high-speed lines like the TGV, because more and more high-speed lines are being built on the continent. It’s a fantastic opportunity to showcase why we think Eurostar is the best, easiest way to go to London if you live, not just in Paris or Brussels, but Holland, western Germany, all over France, Switzerland, north-west Europe. So we liked the idea of helping to bring Europe to the Games and the Games to Europe. We’re doing events in places like Strasbourg, Belgium and getting lots of attention and interest. Here we’re partnering with the London cultural festival, bringing up and coming European artists over for our one-day Traction festival.
Q How did you structure the case for involvement to the board?
A The case was structured as part of our marketing objective to grow market share, especially London-Holland, and Belgium beyond Brussels. It’s a marketing image investment and the return has to come and they’re measuring that very carefully. It’s a hard case, not for fun, and it’s not so much about the traffic we generate during the Games as the longer-run impact.
Q What was the hardest issue to reconcile in order to get board approval?
A It was the first time we went into sports – usually we sponsor culture or music, so there was an element of scepticism. Aren’t we going to be drowned in the noise from all these massive brands? But we decided to go ahead and then advertise in a very different way: not using athletes in our television advertisements, for example, but showing people brainstorming about the opening ceremony.
Q How have you structured your business to maximise Olympic opportunities?
A First we talked to people who had Olympic experience and then put together a team of people from Eurostar and people who had worked on other Games. We have two big strands to that work, the commercial, marketing part and also the operational part, because a big part of our job will be to bring people to the Olympics: athletes, the French, Belgian and Dutch teams, both for Olympics and Paralympics, plus media, officials and VIPs.
Q How did the announcement that you were involved affect your business, internally and externally?
A Internally there was great excitement from day one, but not so much externally – it seemed too far away, perhaps. But now the external interest is catching up, quite late, but I was over in Paris last week and our partners and customers are talking about it over other big events. I thought, because Paris lost to London, there could be a bit of resentment but now there’s just excitement. It’s very positive.
Q How are you handling your ticket allocation and hospitality?
A We’ve got quite a few tickets for staff, for the Games and the test events, and we’ve had a programme of activities to reward performance and customer service. Importantly, people are nominated by their colleagues. We’ll also be showing some of our clients the events, not to win new markets but to build relationships and also for some to experience our service on their way to and from the Games. We’re also doing promotions to reward our customers.
Q How will you judge your success post-Games?
A The short-term goals are all around service in transporting the athletes and other officials, and also internally making sure the whole thing is a positive, light, energising moment – not just a lot of hard work. And the mood in the business is very good. Then there are the longer-term goals about increasing market share over the next three to five years. You might have seen we’ve been advertising lately about London-Amsterdam.
Q What has surprised you most about your involvement to date?
A The sheer size of the operation. It’s absolutely massive, and it’s difficult to realise the scale until you’re involved. I think it will be an extraordinary event. And because it is bang in the middle of western Europe, I didn’t realise but apparently a lot of the countries are investing heavily into the national houses they set up in London for the duration. I think it will be exceptional this year.
Nicolas Petrovic is chief executive of Eurostar.