Sport, Sponsorship and the London 2012 Games
Lewis Guest, a first year student on the BSc Sport Sciences course, reports on a guest lecture by Paul Smith, Sponsorship Manager at Cadbury.
Sport, Sponsorship and the London 2012 Games
The popularity of sponsorship in sport is only increasing along with Brunel’s need to mould employable graduates with their tuition. So it was only fitting for Paul Smith, a Borough Road graduate – to deliver a lecture to the Level 1 Sports Science students on 15th March on his role as the head sponsorship manager for Cadbury’s business strategy during the London 2012 Olympics and currently as the events manager for the 2015 Rugby World Cup. This allowed us to consider the need for businesses to sponsor sport for a return on investment, exemplifying Cadbury’s unique community-centric strategy that imitated Olympic ideals as well as the ‘lasting legacy’, allowing them to shake off previous admittedly poor attempts at this (i.e. the Get Active campaign) and build more brand recognition, even with strict marketing regulations. This made Cadbury’s the official treat provider for the games. Topics discussed include why sponsorship in the first place, its purposes, their struggle to informally establish Cadbury’s as one of the highest-regarded sponsors for the games (considering the limited amount of investment) and the powers of effective endorsement. Earlier-than-usual planning was essential for the exploitation required for returns on investment, so as a result, a 4% increase in sales was shown last year along with a complete strategic repositioning. More importantly for the students, however, are the values that Mr. Smith portrayed along with a broad skills base and applied knowledge of previous study that meant he was able to land this role, showing that the transferrable skills obtained whilst at Brunel can definitely be utilised to great effect.
Mr Paul Smith, Sponsorship Manager Cadbury
Biography: Paul Smith is a graduate of Borough Road College and former England U19 basketball player. He has an extensive breadth and depth of experience across the sports industry. He has worked at five Olympic Games, multiple tennis Grand Slams / Davis Cup events, and has held senior management roles in athletics, basketball and football. He is a specialist in sponsorship strategy, activation, events and PR/communications with a proven track record of delivering complex, high profile projects on time and on budget. Paul is a former Press and Events Manager for the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Executive Director of the International Tennis Federation (ITF). He was head hunted to work for Cadbury’s plc as London 2012 sponsorship manager and delivered the highest quality multi-million pound activation programme across the Olympics and Paralympics.
