An Olympic Dog’s Dinner
This summer, if you have a café in the UK and put a sign in your window advertising your special Olympic breakfast, a government backed jobs-worth will make you take it down, for infringing Olympic commercial rights.
However, if you’re an advertiser wanting to book a poster site within a javelin throw of an Olympic venue, that’s OK whether you’re an official sponsor or not, according to a barely remarked upon Brand Republic story last week, “LOCOG to open Olympic outdoor auction to non-sponsors.”
If I was a sponsor who’d been sold an exclusive opportunity I might think I’d been dealt a blow below-the-belt, particularly if I’d paid a premium rate, over an extended period of time, with a substantial down-payment. Although directly competitive brands have been barred from within the so called exclusion zones around Olympic venues, I’d still want to know under what terms these billboards are being knocked-out at now.
Outside of the exclusion zones outdoor advertising was always available to all brands after sponsors got first dibs, although most will have been made to pay for twelve-weeks of display, rather than the more usual fortnight.
Again if I was any of those brands whose media buyers had won them space in the auction rounds, I’d want to know that opportunistic advertisers with a bag-of-cash on the table right now can’t buy similar sites to those I’d secured, but for shorter periods, at a heavily discounted price.
It looks to me that if you wanted ads on buses or taxis, and some special locations, the auction did you well. Otherwise you may have paid platinum, for what have turned out to be, bronze, silver and gold.
If auctions are the future for buying and selling premium media space, I am a cat.
Although in fact I am Wobbly “the Cat” Clark, but that’s an old-story
You can read my other blogs and about what I do here: www.balloo.co.uk
