olympics 2012: the legacy for ooh - the...

olympics 2012: the legacy for OOH

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introductionThe London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games was a major success. Huge visitor numbers meant the population of London alone almost doubled over the period and a positive national mood prevailed. For the Out of Home industry, significant investment from media owners and clients delivered a significant creative showpiece.

In this document, we have assessed the contribution of the consumer response, media activity, the implications for Out of Home investment into formats, the contribution made by social media, the impact of the LOCOG auction process and the key legacy left by the Games, not only to the social and economic fabric of the nation, but to the future of Out of Home communication around any showpiece events.

Creatively and spectacularly, Out of Home delivered. It engaged the explosion of visitor numbers and delivered digital OOH and social media solutions that the industry can carry forward with confidence. This legacy will help clients and agencies in their understanding of reaching a mobile and engaged audience potentially around any future Out of Home communication scenario.


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The huge success of the Games and the large visitor numbers spending time around the events con-tributed to the overall impact made by the extensive communication activity seen across London and the UK. We started monitoring excitement levels around the Games in October 2010, through our Panel. Even then, roughly half of Londoners (42%) stated they were excited. With the exception of a couple of hic-cups, notably around negative coverage of ticketing process, excitement levels steadily grew, culminating in 41% of the UK and 59% of Londoners being excited about the Olympics in the week before it started.

With the success of the Opening ceremony and the Team GB gold rush that followed, these numbers were no doubt higher in reality. We saw the exact same pattern with the Queen’s Jubilee and last year’s Royal Wedding, demonstrating that there is typically a sig-nificant last-minute spike in public excitement around such major events.

Retail and Leisure

Three quarters of the UK told us they watched the Games in some form out of the home, rising to 83% of 18-24s. Despite some initial news reports of empty streets, footfall for retailers in the heart of the capi-tal was actually up 16% during the Olympic Games, compared with the same period in 2011. Westfield Stratford City attracted more than 5 million visitors throughout the Games and larger retailers particularly benefitted, with John Lewis reporting a 22% year on year increase in sales at their stores.

UK retail spend overall in August was down 0.2% from July, but the majority of the decline can be attributed to a drop in online shopping (-6.7%) as consum-ers opted to spend their time watching the Games instead. Consistent with many large scale sporting events, the food sector experienced an increase in sales and the influence of the athletes helped the clothing and footwear sector (1.6%) along with sport-ing goods and toys receive a boost.

consumer response to the games

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Transport

Billed as the ‘public transport games’ and with every ticket receiving a free travel card, London 2012 was always going to mean huge numbers of passengers travelling around the Rail, Underground, Bus and DLR networks.

60 million passengers travelled on the Underground during the Games, an increase of 30% year on year. This summer has been the busiest period in London Underground’s history and in one day alone (Tuesday August 7th) there were over 4.5 million journeys. The DLR carried more than six million passengers throughout the Games, more than doubling its usual audience. Over half of all spectators used rail for part of their journeys to events, which meant considerable exposure to the numerous rail station advertising dominations, both in central London and Stratford.

Impact of technology

London 2012 marked a significant change in the way people engaged with an Olympic Games. Advancements in technology, specifically smart phones and tablets, meant that people could engage with and talk about the Games in more ways than ever before and, importantly for OOH, could do so whenever and wherever they were, interacting with brand activity along the way. Back in 2008 during the Beijing Games, only 12% of people in the UK had a smartphone. This time around that number sits at over 50%. In 2008 you would have had to ask what a tablet was. In 2012 over 11% of households in Britain have one. So to say much has changed in the way we follow large scale events in the last couple of years would be an understatement.


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Virgin Media’s WiFi service on the Underground delivered over eight million tweets, Facebook posts, emails and web pages during the London 2012 Olympic Games. The service is available in 72 London Underground stations and is set to increase to 120 stations. Technology was fundamental to the way the Games were incorporated into people’s lives and certainly helped amplify the extensive communication around the event and across 2012.

For example:

There were 15 million downloads of the official London 2012 app

4.7million social followers across official London 2012 channels on twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Foursquare

There were more than 150 million Olympic related tweets made throughout the games

80,000 tweets were made per minute about Usain Bolt’s 200-meter gold win, the record for tweets per minute during Olympic competition

Between July 27 and August 8, Jessica Ennis experienced an increase of more than 500% (541,946) in the number of fans on her Facebook page

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analysis of media activityThe overall impact of the Games on the market as a whole was varied. Commercial TV, Press and Radio struggled as viewers flocked to the BBC and online for their news and viewing, although TV recovered with Channel 4’s coverage of the Paralympcs. OOH and Digital were the two big winners from the Games, with sponsors increasing their online presence to take advantage of interest in the games through display, social and mobile.

Sponsors spent approximately £40m during last year’s OOH auction process, primarily on high profile London locations targeting those arriving in London or travelling to the games. Although some highly demanded premium sites saw rate inflation, standard national formats ended up selling at close to normal rates, and there was enough availability that brands were able to capitalise on the short-term market.

BP dominated the Cromwell Road for a 12 week period as the centre piece for their Olympic message. The huge special build comprised cut outs of key athletes as well as a six metre high centre piece of a 3D Olympic torch complete with illuminated flickering flames. They also celebrated the people ‘off the track’ who played their part in helping to make the Games a success and were heavily showing on digital formats in transport environments and large format Roadside.

British Airways used a wide variety of traditional and digital OOH roadside formats to trumpet their support of Team GB. They were also highly visible on the Underground and Rail networks, along with the M4 Tower and 100 wrapped taxis.

Visa has been leveraging their association with the Olympics for many months. They dominated the streets of London with wrapped buses and taxis and welcomed visitors coming into London via Paddington Station and Heathrow airport. The huge images of a sprinting Usain Bolt helped demonstrate Visa’s fast payment solution and resonated with the public with numerous people posing in front of the cut outs and then sharing on social media.


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Lloyd’s spectacularly wrapped Stratford Station for the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic games. Continuing with their ‘for the journey’ positioning but tailoring to the Games saw them feature actual sporting equipment from Olympic sports such as pole vault, a trampoline and a table tennis table throughout the station.

Nike had a significant presence before and during the Olympic period. They targeted a wide variety of non-vicinity media such as large format Roadside, Bus, Underground station dominations around key tourist and shopping areas of Piccadilly and Oxford Circus and other retail environments. We monitored people’s association of a variety of

brands, including Olympic sponsor brands and Kinetic clients such as BT, British Airways, Visa and Lloyds all experienced uplift in sponsor association compared to May.

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use of tactical digital OOHDigital Out of Home really comes into its own during major events with the ability to run dynamic content, react to events in real time, encourage interaction and create a dialogue with consumers helping to amplify the message and increase engagement.

Many sponsors used digital to great effect to keep the public up to date with results and news as they transpired, along with congratulating and recognising the success of high profile athletes.

People travelling around London at any point during the Games would have been unable to miss Heineken as the beer brand that kept travellers informed wherever they were, with dynamic copy changes

to show which events were on that day on a wide variety of digital transport and roadside formats. Fans were also encouraged to upload photos celebrating the Olympics to www.thefanhub.co.uk, where the best pictures were displayed on Transvision screens.

Other notable campaigns: In the run up to the Olympics, adidas ran a series of traditional posters promoting key members of Team GB with taglines such as ‘Take the Stage’. During the Games these were changed to reflect results with the tag line changing to ‘Stage Taken’.

The Daily Telegraph used DEPs on the London Underground to keep commuters up to date by publishing the latest Olympic related headlines around the network.

EDF Energy kept track of the mood of the nation by analysing Olympic related tweets, determining whether they were positive or negative and then visualising them using the lights on the London Eye each night of the Games in a colourful display.


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Clearly the Olympics had a massive impact on social media and the messages were almost unanimously positive in terms of the effect the event had on national sentiment. Advertising – including OOH – and sponsorship also had a significant effect on the social media conversation, with particular references to athletes on posters and other overt references to Nike, Adidas, BA, BP and McDonald’s advertising.

From a brand perspective, sentiment swayed from clear support (the majority for athlete-themed ads) to confusion (some ad messages) and negative (mainly around corporate ticketing). Significantly, the ads were clearly noticed. Here are just some of the com-ments posted;

Nike absolutely dominating Oxford Circus

the nike ads in oxford circus station are awesome. adidas are losing

Whose seen the Nike advertising around Piccadilly Underground? Clever stuff...

Love this BA Paralympics poster (@ Woking Railway Station (WOK) w/ 3 others)

Just drove past @TomDaley1994 Adidas campaign poster #buff

Fair play to adidas for their post-Olympic Games #stagetaken billboard campaign with Ennis, Hoy and Co celebrating. #goosebumps

Your huge poster on Adidas Oxford Street is well deserved @J_Ennis

they’ve taken down the poster of Jessica Ennis at the bus stop. not a good start to the day :(passing the Jess Ennis poster every morning on the bus makes my day

Lovely billboard from McDonald’s showing off their Olympic seat allocations #emptyseats

The proliferation of smartphones in the UK giving people access to the web and social media wherever they are helped people to feel closer to the Games and particularly to the athletes, which inevitably meant they felt more engaged with the event as a whole.

OOH helped generate buzz online

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out of home market analysis

In terms of format occupancy throughout July and August, London-based formats obviously made the most significant gains, which had the most noticeable impact across Bus and London Underground (LU) formats. Assertions that the Olympics would be the transport games were realised in terms of benefit to those particular formats.

Both occupancy and price rose significantly against 2010 and 2011 performance, with LU price inflation up 11% for the whole period and bus inflation up 16% in July and 12% in August. Occupancy of both formats reached 83-89%, with London Bus selling out across the period with advertisers buying into the high visibility across London’s streets to capitalise on the high visitor numbers. Nationally, Bus formats delivered strongly, the market selling well in advance versus the norm.

July, all Underground formats

August, all Underground formats

July, all bus formats

August, all bus formats


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Nationally, Outdoor performed well across large format paper and digital sites. Brought-forward demand generally drove higher market rates for 48 and 96 sheets. For 48 sheets, in July the market price excluding Olympic/LOCOG sponsors increased by 1% which is an acceptable market increase considering occupancy was in the mid 70%s. Once we include the Olympic effect, the market increased by an additional 2.7%. 48 sheet occupancy in August 2011 hit a record high although the Olympic effect did drive pricing up 2% on that period.

The majority of sheetage bought as London only across 48s was paper/broadcast and prices inflated by 2.9% year on year. Advertisers took advantage of August deals in the market and performance increased by 6.3% on top of the natural growth.

For 96s, the Olympic effect was to drive price through demand, with backlight 96s – particularly more attractive panels in London – driving demand, occupancy and – significantly for this premium format – price.

In August, the market price naturally increased by 5.2%, however once you include the Olympic bookings, this inflated to 14.4%, an uplift of 8.8% on the market average.

The 6 sheet market struggled across the period as the natural market price remained flat year on year. The Olympic effect added delivered an increase of 6.3% year on year inflation in july and 5.2% in August. Proximity 6s held the market up well. Demand has returned significantly to this format post Olympics!

July, all 48Sheets

August, all 48Sheets

July, all 96Sheets

August, all 96Sheets

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the impact of the LOCOG regulations and the auction process legacyLOCOG applied a centralised buying process to all OOH media in host cities for a period that encapsulated the Games (Olympic Period). All OOH media in proximity to Olympic venues for the Olympic Period was only allowed to be used by Sponsors or Games Bodies – unsold space would have to be blanked out. A trading method was required to allow sponsors to compete fairly for the most appropriate space. All OOH media was held off the market for only sponsors to buy until 13 months out from the games.

The reserved space was broken into 4 categories; Vicinity; Spectacular; Premium; Standard. Media owners were asked to allocate their stock into packages within each category which were to be priced at 2010 market rates plus a factor for inflation.

Space was to be traded as a combination of auction and fixed price – higher tiered sponsors have the rights to buy space before other sponsors. An online auction system was put to tender by LOCOG in 2010, and awarded to Media Equals.

The Media Equals system was populated by media owners with their products including descriptions and some visuals, sponsors had a one month browsing period to examine the products online and seek additional information off-line. All sponsor trading was completed by late June 2011 and all unsold space was returned to the open market in July.

Being forced to book space well in advance of the normal planning process and therefore in advance of strategic communications planning required Kinetic to take a lead in implementation planning directly with our clients. A deep understanding of audience movement throughout the games periods delivered Kinetic clients a significant advantage over other sponsors. Bespoke research, Government and Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) research and transport planning documents, mapping venues, interviewing workers at venues, relating transport capacity with preferred mode of travel, mapping target audiences flow through London to the Olympic park.


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Normal approval processes had to be revised in order to create the flexibility needed to exploit the auction process. The Media Equals trading platform effectively listed ‘lots’ which could then be traded as auction items or as ‘buy it now’ items – the functionality exists for off line conversations to alter the online ‘buy it now’ price but this was not used in this process.

Overall Kinetic clients did very well using the platform, achieving the lots they desired without entering into overinflated bidding battles – however our plans and recommendations were partially influenced by the way the platform operated and required a high level of preparation for a short frenzy of activity.

For similar future occasions, an efficient, transparent platform could be built but there are many technical, political and structural challenges to this and they may outweigh the benefits. The auction demonstrated that it was a fair process for the purpose but imperfect and would not be welcome or repeated in normal trading.

The platform would need to show media availability as a fluid entity that could be optimised against in real time. This in turn requires the market to be traded as a fluid entity. The danger is that we will shape a market to fit a trading system rather than build a trading system that reflects a market.

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the Olympics OOH legacy

Legacy was the central theme of the London 2012 experience and it was important for all of us within the Out of Home industry that some lasting benefits could come from both the lengthy build-up to the event and the significant levels of investment donat-ed by media owners and sponsors alike.

With the Greatest Show on Earth coming to the Greatest City on Earth, we expected something spe-cial; sponsors certainly expected something special from their media amplification and OOH delivered it in spades. Sponsors dominated the gateway to the UK at Heathrow, the gateway to the Olympic park in Stratford and made their presence felt across the capital.

Achieving this wasn’t easy or cheap and required a multitude of permissions and protections from Government, local authorities and transit networks that have never been granted before. However the magnitude of hosting the Olympics on home turf concentrated sponsors efforts and got them focused early in the process – it is from this that we can learn and apply to future events.

Meanwhile, media owners got right behind the event and where they delivered relevance for a justifiable investment, their expectations were met. Elsewhere, some wild expectations of multi-million pound deals and some unexplained desire to brand and wrap everything that would stay still long enough to glue a poster to, didn’t always materialise.

As with most things in the real world, with time, effort and financial resource great things can be achieved. The resultant spectaculars in London this summer have raised the bar in terms of the visual impact required to ‘dominate’ an environment. Lloyds TSB totally encapsulated Stratford station, includ-ing athletes performing within the station, VISA took ownership of the Westfield entrance to the Olympic park with a multitude of huge banners, BP dominated the Heathrow-London route via road and Rail, whilst BMW and Dow Chemical’s massive building wraps were visible across the Olympic park – scale at a level unseen before was the order of the day.

Social media (as we’ve noted) was not slow to pick up and accelerate the impact of both the event itself and of the advertising messages around it. Whether ampli-fying the images of Jess Ennis or Usain Bolt and their brand associations, or to reflect Nike’s obvious affili-ation with the developing national Olympic psyche, added value was attained to the bold sponsors and non-sponsors not afraid to reach millions of engaged and excited visitors and attendees.

Expectations have certainly raised for the future and our industry is better equipped to deliver those higher expectations, however the Olympic effect will not be repeated and that has to be considered when planning future events. The Olympics are a one off; a perfect combination of a large group of well funded advertisers (which motivates the media owners)


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combined with an open minded legislature at national and regional level. Media owners were prepared to go the extra mile, and many did, whilst local authorities recognised that sponsor funding is crucial in deliv-ering large scale events and showed flexibility in planning regulation and access – they were further comforted by the protection from hijack offered by National Government and the IOC.

From a sponsor perspective, we will not see this benign environment for innovation and flexibility provided for us again, so if we wish to replicate ‘Olympic Media’ we will have to replicate the regula-tory security and financial motivation for ourselves – not easy but certainly doable, the key is time, effort and financial resource. Early engagement with event organisers, sponsors, and regulatory bodies is es-sential in providing the security they require. Early engagement with transport providers, venue own-ers, media owners and other landlords is essential in enthusing them to become partners in delivering one off visual spectaculars, financial motivation is of course critical at this stage as well.

From a non-sponsor perspective, much media innova-tion was blocked by all encompassing legislation and IOC rules – the rigidity of these will not be repeated for non-Olympic events allowing some very imagina-tive ideas to be repeated for future events. We would continue to suggest early engagement and sensitivity to the rights bought by key sponsors, but event asso-ciation through environmental domination is well and truly back on the cards.

Overall, the British public has truly embraced an “event” mentality more than at any time in living memory, whilst supportive engagement at events by brands can now be both welcomed and expected. Brands are not and should not be afraid to truly embrace any kind of event or scaled public gath-ering on the streets where the message can hit

hardest. The next few years will represent the best opportunity for brands to recreate Olympic media at public events, but you do need to get well ahead of the game to guarantee a podium position. The Com-monwealth Games come to Britain in 2014 – see you in Glasgow!

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olympics 2012: the legacy for ooh - the...

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