LET THE SUNSHINE IN

Odd how a bit of sunshine completely changes the way you feel or think. Or in my case not think. My brain has gone into “idle” ever since a fortnight in sunny Venice and a return to, heaven be praised, sunny  Brighton. (Now I understand the problem in Greece, Italy and Spain – too much sun). Now I’m in a kind of “what’s it all about Alfie?” frame of mind. Given the state of the world today,  Alfie rather than the IMF or the rest of that wretched Troika might have a more useful viewpoint.

So Alfie what do you think?

“Well the Olympics are great. Have you noticed how much nicer people are being at stations and throughout London – smiling and being helpful? I guess we might be learning to lift our standards of customer service…and be like they are in New York. And yes the sunshine helps. And there’s something odd in the press: a series of views that the bad news about recession may have been too gloomy and possibly wrong. Even James Naughtie was cheery on the Today programme. Post Leveson could we have a good-news media? Are we being infected by what Boris called a “benign virus”? What else do I really think? Economics is boring and always wrong - always. Bankers are barmy. The uber-rich are wretched and doomed. People at the top of companies are all “out of touch”. Oh yes one other thing.  The Olympics is wonderful because it’ll be about everyone trying their best but I don’t much like McDonalds, Coca-Cola or Visa. Oops – shouldn’t have said that…. What else do you want to know?”
Just your address Alfie, so the Brand Police can come and arrest you for “reputation-terrorist-attacks” on those great brands.

How do we recreate that sunshine we’ve missed for so long? Speeches don’t do it. Images can start to. Music helps. But it’s an event that does it. We need an anniversary, a national party, a big unifying event to make everyone grin.

The lesson of the Olympics is a lesson in the power of “Event Marketing”.

And Alfie is right.
I was in London today, the Olympic spirit is wonderful and London buzzed.
We are so lucky because I suddenly realised how great London is – here’s how Nancy Durrant of the Times described it - “a heaving, breathing, shifting beast with a mind of its own.”
And that’s just Boris Johnson.

Boris – a mind of his own - sunshine or shower?

BRINGING ATHLETIC VALUES TO WORK

For a long time now I have been a sceptic about the value of using sport as a guide to success in business. Talks on how javelin throwing can help you gain market share have always seemed to me to miss the mark.

But I’m changing my mind after last week.

I went to a conference called “Ahead of the Games” at the Royal College of Physicians in Regents Park to hear a cluster of past Olympic medal winners tell their stories.

And something happened to me; it wasn’t, you see, just what they said but what lay behind their talks and the uniformly clean, enthusiastic positivism of their delivery and attitude to life that suddenly got to me. I became not just a believer in the Olympics but in this simple professional approach to life. There were no spurious words about market forces or external factors. This was simply you against them.

Three things particularly stuck in my brain (although if you want my list of all 20 top tips just e-mail me at richard@hallogram.freeserve.co.uk )

1. On marketing – here’s what I jotted down as they were talking “The Olympic buzz is a virus – think of how to create a marketing buzz in your business – create a build up: a sense that something’s going to happen; use real people to talk about it; make the event itself extraordinary; worry about how to exceed expectation and then how to leave a legacy of new talent.” Stop using military metaphors in marketing and start using medical ones. How to create a pandemic for your brand – that’s the marketing man’s real job….spreading the bug.
    
2. On the big performance – be that the race or, say, a business presentation….one chance…one contest…one winner….or as someone said “it’s sometimes not so much winning a bronze as losing a gold”. They all talk about proper preparation, about smiling at the start and reflecting “I’ve done all I can”. If Olympic athletes were as prepared to busk as most business people seem to be we’d never win anything. Robustly thorough preparation is everything.
3. On success – top athletes all surround themselves with good advisors on diet, on positive thinking, on aches and pains, on technique because the difference between success and failure is the small % point improvement such help can give. And all, literally all, talk about WE not I – “we met every week over four years”: “we talked about it”; “we discovered a better way”; “we ran…” Compared with the value of achieving success, good mentoring and coaching is really cheap. Not to be mentored is one sign of career damaging egotism.

This event taught me more about business than I’d expected as well as inspiring me hugely. The Olympics is coming. It’s going to be great. And if business in Britain is half as professional as the builders of the event itself and athletes competing in it then the next good times are just around the corner.