On The Clock with Bridgestone’s Phil Pacsi
Phil Pacsi is the Vice President of Sports and Events Marketing for Bridgestone Americas. Phil and I sat down at PyeongChang 2018 to talk about their partnership with the International Olympic Committee as a TOP (The Olympic Partner program) sponsor. We discussed how Bridgestone got started with the Olympic movement, their experiences at Rio 2016, and how they brought those lessons forward here to PyeongChang 2018.
Here is Phil Pacsi, on the clock:
OTC:
How did Bridgestone become a TOP Olympic sponsor?
Phil Pacsi:
It’s a really interesting story that all came to be in June of 2014 when we signed our sponsorship, but we had been investigating it many months before that to look at platforms that could work for Bridgestone on a global basis. We are a global company. Our corporate headquarters is in Tokyo, but when we look at our business, we really divide the business in regions. Our Tokyo office covers Japan. Our regional office in Singapore covers the rest of China and Asia Pacific. Our office in Brussels handles Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia. Then we have an office in Nashville, Tennessee that covers the Americas. We wanted to unify those groups together. We used to be in Formula One and we had a great run. We exited and were looking for something else, so we started investigating the Olympic movement and got very excited about it. There’s nothing bigger than the Olympic Games; we finalized the agreement in June of 2014 we and it’s been a whirlwind since then.
OTC:
Rio 2016 was your first Olympics as a sponsor. What lessons learned did you bring forward to PyeongChang 2018?
Phil Pacsi:
Rio was a true learning experience. We had limited activation rights at our first Olympic Games and only marketed to four countries for Rio. The US, one of the largest consumers of the Olympic movement. Brazil, because it was the host country. Korea, because PyeongChang was of course next, and Japan, our home market, in anticipation of Tokyo 2020. It was a way to learn about the Olympic movement, learn how you do things, what you can and can’t do, and prepare to expand it globally. Coming to PyeongChang, this is our first Olympic Winter Games and our first truly global Games, with activations extending into new countries and more key markets around the world.
Here in PyeongChang we’re activating in a variety of different ways, from outfitting the IOC fleet of vehicles in our Blizzak winter tires, to a robust out of home marketing campaign that features our global “Chase Your Dream” message, and a partnership with the PyeongChang 2018 Education Program. We are also supporting a global roster of Team Bridgestone athlete ambassadors and invited guests from around the world to experience the Olympic Winter Games with us.
OTC:
How has your hospitality program grown from Rio to PyeongChang?
Phil Pacsi:
Globally, we’re hosting about150 guests as part of our program across our entire wave structure. We’re bringing people from the Americas. We just hosted groups of people from Vietnam, Thailand, & India. We had two groups from Japan. We had a group in from Europe. After that, we have another wave coming in that’s going to be the local Korean market. We’re really covering a lot of territory with guests, and we had to expand in terms of our marketing and hospitality programs.
OTC:
From a marketing standpoint, are all of your regions activating the same?
Phil Pacsi:
Each region is doing something unique under our Olympic manifesto platform, which is called “Chase Your Dream,” It’s the guiding light and principal of what we do. Everybody evolves it differently for their markets. In the Japan market, they use “Chase Your Dream” as their guiding message. In China and Asia Pacific, it’s sort of a hybrid with message and product. Europe is very focused on athletes and with a “Chase your dream no matter what” focus and in the Americas, we use a platform that is consistent with our Olympic message but also emphasizes “Clutch Performance.”
OTC:
You launched Team Bridgestone at Rio 2016, which was US-only, but for PyeongChang 2018 Team Bridgestone is a global team, was that another lesson?
Phil Pacsi:
Rio helped us understand the athlete relationship in terms of their training time, working with agents, etc. We developed global criteria: In this day and age of social media, that’s a big part of what you want to do from an athlete standpoint. You want to have somebody who’s engaged or somebody who is on the cusp of being really big, so we look at that potential to medal. Tires are the biggest aspect of our Olympic relationship and with our athletes in the States, we also looked at athletes who had an interest in tires and the automotive space. We recognize that athletes are also Bridgestone customers, driving to and from practice each day.
For example, Amy Purdy, one of our Paralympic athletes, lives in Colorado, so we gave her a set of our Bridgestone Blizzak tires, which are our winter technology tires. She was amazed because the week before she had those on, her other tires slid off the road. She went to that same spot when she got her Bridgestone winter tires and she was amazed that she just breezed right through. She’s been excited to drive on those tires ever since.
OTC:
How are you activating here in South Korea during the Winter Games? What programs do you have and where are they based?
Phil Pacsi:
It’s a little bit different based upon what region is hosting the program, but from the Americas it is focused on our customers. We’re bringing our best customers to come, enjoy the events, and spend time with us at very intimate programs. We just finished our first wave with our US guests and we had three customers to two executives, a very intimate experience with them where you get a real opportunity to know them. Same thing with our Japanese colleagues. They’re bringing their biggest customers to the region to be hosted. The European customers are the same way. We’re also doing a lot of teammate hosting to give our teammates incentives to come and see.
For example, we are bringing in some teammates from China-Asia-Pacific and Japan on smaller length trips to offer them a chance to see it in person and learn because Japan is preparing for Tokyo 2020 and China-Asia-Pacific for Beijing 2022, so this is a chance for them to learn on-site. It’s not really hospitality for them, but more of a working-learning program. There are several people from our Communication function that are coming in and spending a couple days learning and finding their way around the media center. We’re bringing people from the marketing functions to understand how to host customers and what a wave structure looks like. We have a group of people that will be operationally focused on Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022, so we’re doing what we call a learning lab and we’re taking them to venues to see what other people are doing operationally. The next two games are all in Asia and we have a very large base here, so we’ll take advantage.
OTC:
How will you be engaging with fans throughout the games, especially those who are in the United States that do not make the trip to South Korea?
Phil Pacsi:
Many different approaches. Number one, we’re huge partners with NBC. We do a lot around NBC broadcasting the Games, but we’ve taken really a 360-degree approach starting with our own individual teammates. We’re doing blogs for our teammates back at home and we have a site called, “The Bridge” where people can get the latest news and info. We’re showcasing events as live as they can be in our offices as all of the TVs are running the Olympic Games. Before we left, we hosted a Kimchi making party for everyone. It was a fun thing for our team-members to learn and understand about Korean culture even though they wouldn’t be able to experience it with us here.
We also have a lot of activity in the social and digital space. A lot of focus on our athletes and athlete profiles, and support for Team USA. On the retail side, each store is an important part of our activation. When you look at retail sales, we have between five and six thousand retail points of sale in the Americas and our Olympic athletes are a key focus there right now. Our Olympic and Team Bridgestone-themed signage has been up since November and are staying until the end of the games.
OTC:
As we look forward to Tokyo 2020, what can we expect from Bridgestone?
Phil Pacsi:
We’re really working hard at formulating our plans right now and we have a lot of different things on the table. It’s a big deal for us. Tokyo is our global home. We’re the only TOP sponsor that’s based in Tokyo. It will be a major milestone for us and there’s a lot of moving pieces to determine where we net out, but we’re studying a lot of things and turning over a lot of rocks. From a hospitality standpoint, we already have tremendous interest. Everybody wants to go to Tokyo 2020!
