Marketing Lessons from Chicago's Failed Olympic Effort

Within minutes of the announcement that Chicago had been eliminated after the first round of host city voting by the International Olympic Committee, the postmortems and second-guessing began about what had caused this highly visible smack down of the Second City. And from the look of things in the Chicago and national media, the autopsies are going to continue for some time and will surface anew during the next election cycle.

One of the oft repeated reasons for the Rio victory has been the ongoing feud between the US Olympic Committee and the IOC. Seems whenever there is a lot of money at stake, power games get played. One party accuses the other of being greedy. Each side portrays the other as paying too little or keeping too much. In light of this continuing power struggle, Chicago entered the contest at a disadvantage. Probably one that even the most polished pitch could not overcome.

That being said, the Chicago pitch ignored a few very basic marketing principles while Rio de Janeiro employed them to achieve final victory.

Any good marketer will tell you there is a world of difference between defining the customer and really knowing them in terms of what they need and what motivates them. Rio appears to have had a real familiarity with this very small target audience of 100 or so electors. They got to know them personally not just in the course of this year's bidding process as Chicago did, but through the preceding three Summer Olympic host city selections. Even though Rio received no first round votes in the process for both the 2004 and 2012 Summer Games, they had the opportunity to meet and greet the IOC members. They were able to "work the room" not just for the last three years but since 1996! They had the opportunity to form real relationships by moving beyond the awareness stage.

Judging by their shock following the 1st round elimination, it would appear that the Chicago team did not understand the audience or their motivations. For a political machine that prides itself on the ability to tell people how they are going to vote before they approach the polling station, that is a bit of a surprise.

Listening to the final presentations by both Chicago and Rio de Janeiro the differences between them were clear. It was almost the classic sales department/marketing department dichotomy. When presenting a product, sales often talks features while marketing talks benefit to the buyer. On Friday, the sales guys were from Chicago and the marketers from Rio. Chicago had a healthy dose of "pick us and this is what it will mean to us." Rio on the other hand stressed what electing them would do for the International Olympic movement in terms of expanded opportunities and a wider audience not just in Brazil but across South and Central America.

Apparently, many of the "what's in it for me" moments were delivered to the electors privately and repeatedly. Rio played to emotion and prestige by emphasizing a very personal benefit for the electors. By voting for Rio, electors would go down in history as the International Olympic Committee members who brought the Games to a continent for the first time. For those to whom power and fame are powerful narcotics, that may have been all they needed to hear. Be on the lookout for South Africa to play the same hand in four years.

The POTUS and the FLOTUS are a great pitch team. But they both learned again that a great ad for a mediocre product that fulfills a less compelling benefit only gets you halfway to the final sale. In fact, a competitive product that isn't so nicely packaged and that may even under-deliver in terms of performance can capture share with a relevant and memorable benefit. And Rio found that benefit by helping IOC electors answer the question: What's in it for me? It was so compelling a benefit that the electors overlooked some severe infrastructure issues and the fact that many of the promises that brought the 2007 Pan Am Games to Brazil were never kept.

But hey, no sour grapes. Let's hope Rio stages a great and safe Summer Olympics. And though it looks unlikely, maybe Chicago will give it another try. Since when has anyone from the Windy City taken no for an answer? Only this time maybe they'll do it the "Chicago Way": bags of cash, compromising photos of the electors, and not-so-veiled threats in place of snappy slogans and charming logos. Those tactics appear to work with the IOC as evidenced by new rumors alleging Rio promised aid to some African nations and the purchase of fighter jets from France in return for votes. Seems Chicago might have been out Chicago-ed after all.