Running the Right way.

Half way through my training for the Hampton Court Half Marathon.  Seeking inspiration, I sought Mo Farah on YouTube.  And there he was, gliding around the track, effortlessly.

And the it struck me. Why do they always run round the track in an anti-clockwise direction?  Here's why...

According to a certain Paul Cartledge, professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge, at Olympia and elsewhere in Greece both the running track and the hippodrome were straight, using up-and-back "laps" and even in the early modern Olympics - Athens (1896 and 1906), Paris (1900), St Louis (1904) - athletes ran clockwise.

At the time of the 1896 Games, most track races in England were also run clockwise and at Oxford and Cambridge University, both important athletic institutions, races also ran clockwise  (Oxford until the late 1940s and Cambridge until the 1950s)

But a number of countries began to settle instead on the American custom of running counter-clockwise... 

One theory is that early races were run on horse tracks, which ran in that direction. 

Anti-clockwise became the norm by the early 1900s and the Olympic organisers came under pressure to conform. The change was compete world-wide between between 1950 and 1954 and Roger  Bannister's four-minute mile was run in the anti-clockwise direction.

So we have the Americans to thank it seems – but does running anti-clockwise make a difference to left or right-legged athletes?

Answers on a postcard please.

And the Gold medal goes to..Nike

Ambush marketing. The one thing the official sponsors were trying to avoid, with all the talk of 'brand police' at the turnstiles.  And yet, the Gold Medal of Ambush Marketing goes to Nike for their bright yellow-green running shoes.  They were one of the most prominent non-sponsors of the Olympics - and yet Nike managed to hi-jack the greatest show on earth with their amazing neon 'Volt' shoes.

Over 400 athletes wore Nike Volts in competition at the London Olympics and of those 400, 68 athletes won Olympic medals, including 25 gold medals

The man behind the Volt Shoe is Martin Lotti, Nike's global creative director for the Olympics . An industrial designer by education, he has been at Nike for 15 years. Painting Nike's Flyknit shoe Volt in that vivid way , was, he says, his way of creating a kind of "Team Nike."

Previously, the brand had matched the colour of the shoe to the color of the individual athlete's uniforms. Although the problem with that is that it blended in. This year, hundreds of athletes from different countries wore the same vivid colour

Nike used their own marketing assets (their shoes) - that belonged to them alone, and this gave this gave them a unique opportunity to take advantage of the Olympic rules.

Focus groups of amateur, college and professional athletes had been shown the shoe in different colours and, across the board, everybody loved the Volt, Lotti revealed .

There's a scientific reason for that. "It's the most-visible colour to the human eye." said Lotti.

Read the full background story here 

And for more on the running shoe itself...here

Olympic Winners and Losers

Sport has always played a large part in my life; whether it’s playing football in the park or watching Usain Bolt in the 100m final – the power of sport to engage and inspire is undeniable. (My personal favourite was the Brownlie Bros in the men’s triathalon..)

Following London 2012 there is now  a great debate on who won the marketing Olympics - which brands stood and out and which ones didn’t even make it off the starting blocks. But there is one thing that unites all brands involved - that they recognize the importance and power of sport and the passion it inspires in consumers.

So thanks to the BBC for raising the benchmark of sporting broadcasting. From their Olympic Trailer to their multi-channel coverage, the BBC where simply superb and their montages alone worthy of gold medals in editing and compilation.  And thanks also to the Royal Mail for reminding me to send a proper letter next time rather than an email.

It’s a shame then that it is unlikely Britain’s recession-hit economy will receive any boost from the Games that have been a triumph for the nation’s athletes. While Britain’s construction sector benefited hugely before the Olympics, experts have said the 17-day sporting spectacle had not delivered significant financial rewards and neither was it expected to in the months and years ahead.  Visitor numbers to London were estimated to be down 30%

In the run-up to the Olympics, commuters and tourists were warned to stay away amid fears that London’s transport system could not cope with millions of extra people descending on the capital. 

The London Olympic Games had long been heralded as a key boost to the British economy but in fact tourist numbers fell dramatically in the first few days of the Games. Hotels cut their prices and many shopping areas, restaurants, theatres, attractions and entertainment venues saw a significant reduction in business. Businesses complained of being sidelined as tourists headed only for the Games and avoided the capital’s other attractions and shopping destinations, while non-sports fans opted to stay at home or delay their trips.

Of course, we knew all of this already so why are officials now so surprised? 

http://www.fesmarketing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/london-2012-therell-be-trouble-ahead.html

Hopefully, the organisers of next Olympics in Rio will from the lessons in London….but why would they when London did not learn from the lessons of previous  Olympic cities and countries that went before them!

The Drum fauxlympics

Drum Magazine has been running a twitter and facebook campaign and competition called the #thedrumfauxlympics and the entries are some of the best spoof ads I've seen for a long time.

Have a look at all the entries here and cast your own vote on their facebook page.

Anti-Clockwise - better for right-legged athletes?

A great weekend of Olympic Sport and well done to ‘TeamGB’ on their medal tally so far, although I understand from an Australian friend of mine that actually ‘Silver is the new Gold’!  

Watching Mo Farah on Saturday night, I wondered why do they always run round the track in an anti-clockwise direction?  And, thanks to the BBC, here’s the answer:

According to a certain Paul Cartledge, professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge, at Olympia and elsewhere in Greece both the running track and the hippodrome were straight, using up-and-back "laps" and even in the early modern Olympics - Athens (1896 and 1906), Paris (1900), St Louis (1904) - athletes ran clockwise.

At the time of the 1896 Games, most track races in England were also run clockwise and at Oxford and Cambridge University, both important athletic institutions, races also ran clockwise  (Oxford until the late 1940s and Cambridge until the 1950s)

But a number of countries began to settle instead on the American custom of running counter-clockwise... 

One theory is that early races were run on horse tracks, which ran in that direction. 

Anti-clockwise became the norm by the early 1900s and the Olympic organisers came under pressure to conform. The change was compete world-wide between between 1950 and 1954 and Roger  Bannister's four-minute mile was run in the anti-clockwise direction.

So we have the Americans to thank it seems – but does running anti-clockwise make a difference to left or right-legged athletes?

Answers on a postcard please.

UK - Closed for Business?

With the Olympics in London, there has been much debate in Travel and Tourism circles about the tourism benefits of  hosting the Olympic games this year.  London can rightly be proudly of the fact that the Olympics will attract more visitors than any other previous Olympic host city. That's 60,000 international visitors coming purely to see the Olympic games (and twice as many that visited Athens for example)


Critics however argue that this increase in visitors to the Olympics is massively offset by the huge fall in international leisure visitors - or in other words, the huge number of visitors who will actively seek to travel elsewhere in order to avoid visiting London when the Olympics are on!


(For more on this see BlogPost - The Ups and Downs of London Tourism )


However, there is also one other major reason why tourists are choosing to travel elsewhere other than the UK - and it has nothing to do with the Olympics.  It's the difficult and obstructive process of obtaining a visa!  A process so difficult and absurd in its application that many people simply give up!


The European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) have been campaigning and lobbying for a revision of the visa application process for many years seeing a simplification of the visa application process as conducive to boosting to incoming tourist business, and (multiplier) spend.


Last week there was a Radio 4 'Face the Facts' programme dedicated to this very subject  - have a listen to the arguments.  Some will say relaxing visa controls will lead to increases in illegal immigration and terrorism -  other, more rational people will argue that a sensible visa application system will boost visitors to the UK and  generate millions of extra consumption into the UK economy.


(Tom Jenkins of the ETOA and visa-reform-evangelist features in the programme)

BBC 2012 Olympic Trail

For those that missed the amazing title sequence and marketing trail for the BBC 2012 Olympics - here it is!

The animation will be used for each Olympic event, as well as being used for marketing purposes. At just over a minute long, the sequence sees athletes running through terraced streets; cyclists tackling the Scottish highlands and gymnasts somersaulting along the London bridge.

The animation was created by design agency RKCR/Y&R, who describe themselves as 'the UK's most creative agency'. 

The production was handled by Passion Pictures and Red Bee Media, with Passion Pictures also taking care of the animation. Director Pete Candeland has also worked with the likes of Coca Cola and the Gorillaz. 

A full two-minute, forty second version will be aired on BBC One on July 3rd. Sixty, Forty, Thirty and Five second versions of the titles will be used throughout the games coverage.

I would love to know how much it cost!   Any ideas?

I understand a team of high-profile executives from the 'Welcome to Yorkshire' tourist board have been in secret talks to try and bring the 2016 Tour de France to HULL!

According to the Hull Daily Mail, a team led by the tourist board visited the Paris offices of the Tour's organising committee to present the region's bid to see Hull as one of the locations for the Grand Depart – the opening two days of the race.

I'm not sure that any economic impact would be quite as significant as that claimed by a 'spokesman' for the Tourist Board, who states that for Hull to be part of the tour would be a major boost for the region and that "tens of millions of pounds" would be spent by visitors snapping up hundreds of hotel rooms and visiting pubs and restaurants, but it would certainly be a major coup for the region if they can pull it off.

The route submitted for consideration proposes Leeds city centre as the starting destination from which the 22 teams would weave their way to the Yorkshire Dales, head east to Scarborough and the coast, via York and the North York Moors, before dropping south to Hull and finally to Sheffield.

Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome To Yorkshire, also says "The economic impact for Yorkshire will be tremendous and we will do everything we can to make sure the event comes here".

"Yorkshire is a world-class destination experienced at successfully hosting world- class events and we believe it will provide the perfect backdrop to the world's greatest cycle race."

Apparently Yorkshire's bid seems to have been positively received by the organising committee at this stage .More talks are due to take place next month and the Tour organisers will visit the region to see the proposed route.

The Royal Wedding is for mugs

So best wishes to Kate and Will and lets all at least enjoy our day off!

Some analysts predict the wedding will boost tourism and retail sectors, putting an extra £1 billion into the economy.

Hotels are offering royal wedding packages, a brewery is offering a Kiss Me Kate beer, and jewelers big and small cannot push enough replicas of Princess Diana's sapphire and diamond engagement ring.

Among companies selling royal memorabilia - tea towels, commemorative mugs, fine bone china tea sets and Kate and William "paper doll kits" - there is great excitement, with some reporting an increase of up to 40 per cent in sales over last year, mostly to the US.

London expects more than 1 million visitors on the wedding day and up to £50 million in tourist spending. If all attend the wedding, the number would dwarf the 600,000 who lined the streets 30 years ago for the marriage of Charles and Diana.

Tomorrow's wedding is also expected to create television history, with the BBC broadcasting to about 2.5 billion viewers in the US, Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.

But while the wedding will benefit some businesses, others are not over the moon.

The problem is the timing. Each public holiday typically costs the UK economy £6bn in productivity and overtime payments, according to the Confederation of British Industry business lobby group. But the extra day off, coming between the end of Easter week and the May Day bank holiday, could mean even greater losses; for a small company, this amounts to a shutdown for the period.

Amid rising unemployment, surging inflation and brutal government austerity measures, the extra holiday could not come at a worse time, says the Federation of Small Businesses. It could even knock 1 percentage point off growth this quarter, some economists say.

"The wedding's good for people selling silly mugs but it certainly is not good for my business," says John Newman, who runs a small management company.

With many world leaders and a huge crowd attending the wedding, there are also questions over the cost of security. The government is coy about how much it has to cough up, but the security for the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana in 1981 was estimated to cost about £30m, not adjusted for inflation.

Even though the economic impact is hard to measure the feel-good factor should not be underestimated, some analysts say.

"Extraneous events can increase feelings of economic and other well-being," says Professor Stephen Lea of Exeter University, who specialises in economic psychology.

While many citizens have been directly affected by the recession or fear they will be, Prof Lea believes there are also those who are merely affected by the general sense of doom and gloom.

Good feelings triggered by the wedding could well motivate this group of people to increase their discretionary spending on items such as electronic goods and home improvements - broader consumption that could lift household spending out of the doldrums, he says.

And along with the queen's diamond jubilee and the Olympics next year, VisitBritain believes the fanfare over the wedding is set to create a "bumper couple of years" for the economy and could be the key to a £2bn tourist-driven economic boom.

And that's certainly not be bad for the economy.

Enjoy your weekend!

London 2012 - There'll be trouble ahead...

......Another View of London 2012

As happens in nearly all Olympic destinations, demand is suppressed during the year of the event. Regular bookings are drying up and the volume of enquiries is down. According to a survey of BIM attendees, demand for 2012 is 20% on 2011.

Demand is reduced, but the industry is unable to meet even reduced levels of demand as there is a dramatic reduction in availability.

The London hotels remain confident that 2012 is going to be a bonanza. This is founded on high rate demand in 2009 and 2010, with solid demand in the summer months. For the Olympics in particular they see: 55,000 room reservations placed by LOCOG; additional requests for accommodation from foreign Olympic Operators; estimates of foreign visitor numbers of 200,000 per night and expectations of massive domestic demand.

In response to this, additional capacity is being added. There are new hotels, home-stay programmes and additional cruise capacity. As LOCOG have secured 40% of the rooms at below market rates, hotels are seeking to recoup their losses by increasing rates and tightening terms for the balance of the rooms. Nearly all non-Olympic business is being declined.

Outside the immediate Olympic period, there is an assumption that whatever demand that would have normally come during the first three weeks of August will be displaced into the surrounding weeks, making an already crowded time (Farnborough, the Paralympics) even more densely packed. This is reflected in higher prices throughout the summer.

Thus the main long-haul origin markets (US and Japan) are finding it impossible to secure hotel space at viable rates and terms during the Games period. Even outside the Games period, operators are facing inflated rates. As London is the gateway town for Britain and for Europe, clients need two slots to be accommodated: at the start and at the end of the trip. The closure of three weeks creates a “crater” of demand in the surrounding period. So the best product established operators can brochure is: nothing during three weeks of the peak season, reduced availability and increased prices for the balance.

This is not a sensible product to beguile flagging demand. Several operators are effectively dropping London as a tourism destination for the bulk of 2012. There is not much that can be done to reverse this. The solutions that have been canvassed (such as “the West Midlands: a viable alternative to London”) do not work. As London is removed from the product offer, the rest of the UK goes with it.

According to a survey of the attendees at the British and Ireland Marketplace, forward placements of business for London 2012 is currently running at 50% below 2011 levels.

This also means that London will cease to be a default gateway for Europe in 2012. For many markets this was happening anyway, as the UK’s position outside Schengen made it a marginal proposition. But it accentuates a trend: we have invited our regular clients to invest their business elsewhere. There is no guarantee that they will return quickly.

The irony of this situation is acute. The assumptions, both in the market and in the supplier community are wrong. The last two times the Olympic Games were held in Europe, they were accommodated in Barcelona (12,000 hotel rooms) and in Athens (15,000 hotel rooms). Neither cities burst. London has 125,000 hotel rooms, plus all the additional capacity added for August 2012.

Says Tom Jenkins, Executive Director of ETOA: “Much of this long-haul business is lost, amounting to over one million clients. That this loss has occurred because of a misperception is obviously regrettable. What matters now is to gain an understanding of exactly how the demand for the Games is manifesting itself. The people who can most help this process are the organisers who are selling tickets to the games. How many tickets are actually being sold to foreign visitors? If we have this figure then demand can be assessed. At present an industry stands in jeopardy through over-hyped fantasies of bonanza.”

2012 Olympic Sites - take your pick

It's 500 days to go before London 2012 gets under way, so here's a run down of some of the more popular venues that are going to be used.. To find more about getting tickets for the Games, check the official 2012 Olympic website.

Olympic Park, East London

Work is well under way at the Olympic Park in East London and the site includes the 80,000 seat Olympic Stadium, the Aquatics Centre and the Velodrome. If you’d like to see the site close up, you can visit on the open days from 22-24 July.

Horse Guards Parade, London
My sons favourite, Beach Volley Ball, will take place on Horse Guards Parade, just behind Downing Street.

Lord’s Cricket Ground, London
Lord’s Cricket Ground in North West London will be transformed into an Archery range for 2012. Crowds of 6,500 will enjoy the competition with two fields of play inside the stadium. You can also visit Lords to see the Ashes urn, and among other things, the stuffed sparrow ‘bowled out’ by Jahangir Khan. You can also tour players’ dressing rooms and see the famous Lord’s Honours Board.

Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park, will host the Triathlon course in 2012. Triathlon is among the fastest-growing individual sports in the UK, and thousands of people will line the route during the races. The park itself is one of the largest parks in London.

Football stadiums, UK-wide
The London 2012 Football competitions will be held at stadiums throughout the country (but not Hull!) Games will be played at Hampden Park in Glasgow; the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff; Old Trafford in Manchester; St James’ Park in Newcastle; Villa Park in Birmingham and Wembley Stadium in London, where the finals will take place.

Weymouth & Portland Harbour, Dorset
Weymouth & Portland Harbour in Dorset, on England’s South East coast, will be the venue for the 2012 Sailing and Paralympic Sailing competitions. Weymouth & Portland Harbour provides some of the best natural sailing waters in Britain and during the Games you can watch the action for free.

Lee Valley White Water Centre, Hertfordshire
The White Water Centre that will host the London 2012 Olympic canoe slalom competition opens to the public on 22 April. It’s the only brand new London 2012 venue that non-Olympic competitors will be able to use before the Games.

Wimbledon, London
Wimbledon in South East London will be used for the Tennis competition at the 2012 Games. Up to 30,000 people will be able to watch the players compete. Highlights at the club’s museum include the Championship Trophies, a 200° cinema screen and a ‘walk-through’ of the men’s dressing room as it was in the 1980s, with John McEnroe.

North Greenwich Arena, London
Otherwise known as the 'O2 Arena'. During the Games, it will seat 20,000 spectators for the Basketball final and 16,500 for the Gymnastics.

Greenwich Park, London
Greenwich Park will host the Olympic and Paralympic Equestrian competitions, plus the combined running and shooting event of the Modern Pentathlon.

I'd just like to add, that the Cycling will becoming through Surbiton (nearly) - and we are all looking forward to that!