Guerilla Marketing - Olympic Style

With headline sponsors paying a mint for official Olympic association perhaps it’s understandable that the organisers didn’t want every Tom, Dick or Harry jumping on the London 2012 bandwagon.

Let’s face it the likes of McDonalds wouldn’t have been too happy to see a repeat of the guerrilla style marketing techniques used so successfully at the last World Cup. Remember how a Dutch beer company upstaged the tournament’s official beer brand with its orange clad supporters?

So with church ladies forced to rename their ‘Olympic’ Flower Festivals and bakers banned from artfully displaying doughnut rings, it was clear that brands would have to be super inventive in order to align themselves with the event, unless they were prepared to pay through the nose.

But in the end it was a piece of cake for a small Birmingham bakery, where patriotism, timing, old fashioned hospitality and great baking proved a winner.

With Birmingham playing host to the Jamaican team, Sunrise Bakery baked a batch of welcome cakes for the team and also supplied a three tier cake, which was the centrepiece of a pre-Olympic gala dinner.

And sprinter Yohan Blake reportedly took such a liking to the bakery’s products he asked for supplies to be sent to the Olympic Village.

Bakery boss Errol Drummond said: “You couldn’t pay for this level of exposure. We’ve had calls from all over the UK and around the world from people wanting to know more about our products. Think how much McDonald’s paid for its Olympic sponsorship. And we’re just a small bakery in the West Midlands.

“We’re developing a link with the Jamaican track and field team. It’s early days but we’re hoping to use this to target a premium marketplace.”

And if it was gold for Sunrise then it was a silver for Birmingham – with Usain Bolt paying tribute to the city after winning his second gold medal.

Don't Be Thrown To The Lions

Tapping into world events is one thing – but it seems one US restaurant has scored a bit of an own goal…

Putting lion meat on the menu in honour of the World Cup in South Africa might have seemed like a great PR stunt. And yes it’s led to lots of publicity – as well as a bomb threat and hundreds of angry emails.

Never mind that apparently it’s not actually illegal to eat lion in the US, Sky News is reporting public outrage at the thought of Simba burgers.

I suppose the morale of this story is to remember that there are always (at least) two sides to every story and it pays to consider that if you want your reputation to remain intact.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much for the public – and press - to turn and once that happens the battle could already be lost.

There’s many a property developer who has been left counting the cost of overlooking the power of local feeling…

So, if you’re planning to do something that impacts on others make sure you’ve looked at it from all sides before you begin – or you could find yourself being thrown to the lions.