Olympic Marketing on a shoestring… Really?

According to Oxford Economic Research (Sept, 2007), hosting the London 2012 Olympics will cause a number of economic displacement impacts. As such, due to overseas visitors staying away because of the perceived expense (160m), domestic tourists heading abroad as a result of the games (124m), and Londoners leaving the capital due to overcrowding fears (91m), our economy will have a 375m deficit to deal with before the games even start. When you add this to the many tangible costs associated with hosting the games, you get a big number.

No big deal, providing the economic benefits derived from an increase in the number of visitors as a result of the games compensate for this, and some, right?

That’s what I thought, until I learned that The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been told to cut 88m from its communications budget over the coming year, and the government intends to slash its overall adspend by 160m. I can only hope that these budgets are being cut with a view to putting some aside to ramp up the activity during 2012 and 2013, but I’m not convinced. I fear we’ll see more cuts in the run up to 2012 and the actual spend will be a fraction of the budget promised, compounded by unrealistic expectations in terms of how ‘efficient’ those responsible for campaign execution can be with the remaining budget.

Yes, there are other economic benefits of being the host nation, but to my mind, the financial viability of hosting the games relies largely on encouraging the rest of the world to visit the UK prior, during, and after the games. As such, the key objective must be to ensure that the Games are used as a vehicle to communicate a clear, compelling and unique reason to visit the UK as a tourist – that sticks for many years after the games.

A couple of questions on my mind:

To what extent will the traditional/existing media coverage of the games achieve this?

With such a challenging objective, and a mass audience (i.e. the rest of the world), is there any substitute for the right level of investment?

Who has an opinion on this?