CorpComms Magazine

'There are 2,065 days to go to the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Games,' read a round-robin email from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog), sent on April 1 this year. No, it wasn't an April Fool's Day prank but it does encapsulate the public relations challenge facing the organisers of the 2012 games.

Invigorating the nation with the Olympic spirit while the event is still five years away must seem as much of a marathon as the actual race in the games, especially when the pre-0lympics sport for much of the media involves claims of how far the games have shot over budget.

'We know everyone is going to have his or her own view,' says Jackie Brock-Doyle, director of communications and public affairs for Locog. 'But we have to get across our side of the story.' The organising committee has 20 people in its communications office, covering media and press, government relations, publications, new media, a 'nations and regions' team and a press operation for the games themselves.

Brock-Doyle is acutely aware, however, that by 2012 the rapidly converging worlds of digital and traditional media may look very different. 'We will be the first games to take place in a truly digital oriented environment,' she says. 'People are not getting their information through traditional sources of media as much as they used to. It's a completely different environment and we are going to have to be aware of that. We will need to be very fleet of foot - 2012 will be the year when Britain's television signals switch to digital. It's going to be a very obvious sign of the way things have changed.'

Work to use as many communications channels as possible to get the Olympic message across has already started. For example, the organising committee's telephone switchboard number has been specially configured as 0203 2012 000. A blog called 'Work in progress' has been put on the www.london2012.net website, with people involved in the preparation effort asked to contribute postings.

People can sign up to receive e-newsletters of the preparations, while the website is also being used to air webcasts of events like the recent press conference to announce the completion of the first underground tunnel at Olympic Park.

The website contains artists' impressions of what the new Olympic facilities will look like and explains the role of the Olympic Delivery Authority (Oda) in buying and selling land, arranging building works and developing an Olympic transport plan. It also contains links to key partners such as Transport for London, the London Development Agency (Lda) and the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation.

Racing ahead

Recently, the website posted video footage of tunnelling activity at the building site and a behind-the-scenes view from Locog chairman Lord Coe on a royal visit to Greenwich Park. There is also a continuous countdown specifying exactly how many years, months, days, hours and minutes remain to the opening ceremony.

'The great thing about the countdown is that there are two Olympics - next summer's games in Beijing and then the winter Olympics in Vancouver - between now and our event,' says Brock-Doyle, 'and there will be a range of programmes we will be launching to get people engaged with and excited about the London Games. Our Olympiad begins at the end of the closing ceremony in Beijing.'

Before then, the Oda has published a separate timescale of milestones it wants to achieve by the time events get under way in China, under the slogan: 'Demolish, dig, design'. By the time the Olympic Flag is handed to London in 2008, the Oda says most of the Olympic Park site will be cleaned up and cleared, bridges and roads will have been built, transport improvements will be well under way and world-class venue designs will be finalised with construction about to begin.

'This is an extremely challenging project, but by setting out the programme of work in this transparent way we believe we are breaking new ground for a project of this scale,' says Oda communications director Tom Curry. 'We are allowing people to judge progress for themselves against the significant investment that is being made.'

One of the major issues is coordinating the communications. Locog is marshalling the effort, reporting directly to the International Olympic Committee (Ioc) alongside representatives of the government, the Mayor of London and the British Olympic Association (Boa). Locog works closely with the Oda - 'it is really part of us,' says Brock-Doyle - but the Oda reports directly to the Department for Culture Media and Sport.

Locog also liaises with the communication teams at the Lda and the Mayor of London's office as well as the five London boroughs - Greenwich, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Hackney - where the games are to be staged. In addition, Locog keeps in touch with the press team at the Department for Culture Media and Sport and the Boa.

'It's a case of keeping in touch with all the stakeholders,' says Locog press officer Adrian Bassett. 'I wouldn't say we're in touch with them all every day but we do work very closely with them all. One of the issues is making sure people understand what our areas of responsibility are. We are looking at the organisation of the games, while the Lda is responsible for infrastructure. It builds the theatres; we put on the show. There is a clear demarcation but we are all working very closely together.'

The name of the games

According to Bassett, Locog has not felt the need to use external public relations advisers to date. That doesn't mean there has been any shortage of issues to deal with, however. Actions to protect the brand of the London Games started as soon as London won the bidding to stage the event. Within eight weeks, a bill was published to protect the rights to the London Olympic branding. That is now law and Locog has been active publishing guides to help people and companies understand what they can and cannot do.

'The rule of thumb is that no group should try to create an association with the London 2012 Olympics it would not otherwise have had,' explains Brock-Doyle. 'We have done a lot of work in producing simple guides for small businesses and other organisations to make the position clear.'

A bigger issue is the supposed budget overruns, which Brock-Doyle feels have been poorly understood by the media. While some elements of the press have reported with glee that the cost of staging the games has already risen from £3 bn to £9 bn, Brock-Doyle stresses that the only change has been an increase in the projected cost to the public purse of staging the games and regenerating the Thames Gateway area from an initial £4 bn to £5.3 bn. 'The figure that has now been agreed in the Oda's budget is £5.3 bn - an increase of about 25 percent on the initial figure,' she says.

The remaining amount quoted as taking the total up to £9 bn is mostly a contingency for the regeneration project, which was always going to happen. 'That £9 bn figure is not the cost of the London Olympics,' states Brock-Doyle, who also stresses that Locog's own budget of £2 bn, to be raised from corporate sponsors and other private fund-raising, has not increased. 'The £9 bn is to pay for the infrastructure and long-term regeneration of this part of London.'

Although Brock-Doyle won't comment on the politics of the funding controversy, it's clear they are intense. London's winning bid for the games was widely promoted as a lasting legacy of New Labour and the Blair administration so it's an obvious football to be kicked about by political opponents and their allies in the media.

Brock-Doyle takes comfort from recent surveys showing that seven out of 10 people in the UK still want the games to go ahead in London, despite the budget controversy. 'That's a pretty amazing figure,' she says. 'The budget issue is really about how people perceive the value of the investment that's going to go into East London, rather than anything else. There are going to be skills benefits and UK-wide benefits, and people can see that. The public is satisfied with that and wants to move forward.'

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