"What we are trying to do here," Grannell says, "is add value to our proposition.

"The best way of doing that is to find things that our customers are passionate about.

"And the two biggest events in the planet that we know our customers are passionate about are the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup.

"Everything else is a distance behind…

"They appeal to similar customers - they are not identical in terms of age and demographics, but there is some crossover.

"The Olympic Games tends to be slightly older people and the split between male and female is far closer.

"For FIFA it tends to be slightly younger and it’s a slightly male bias more than female.

"Why both?

"First of all, they’re two years apart, which means that we have some continuous marketing opportunities generally.

"[We also have] slightly different ways of marketing in terms of how we operate it.

"The Olympic Games is quite strategic, so it’s longer leading-time. 

"It is far bigger in terms of footprint of the Games, which means we use it more to showcase our payments and services - next-generation if you like.

"FIFA is more about stadiums and locations.

"We tend to use that far more tactically around advertising and promotions and building up preference…

"They are both about gaining market share, but one will be more on products and one will be slightly more on promotions."

This difference in approach between the events is, of course, to some extent dictated by the IOC’s "clean" venues policy.



As Visa has been one of the IOC’s TOP sponsors since 1986, it should probably come as no surprise that Grannell sees advantages in this approach for an entity with the resources and expertise of Visa.

"We don’t mind clean venues because as a sponsor it actually makes you do what I would call ‘proper’ marketing," he says.

"You can’t just rely upon the fact you can put your brand going around the stadiums if what you’re trying to do is build awareness and preference.

"So we don’t mind it because we think we do the ‘proper’ marketing things pretty well and over a longer period than most other sponsors and we’ve got a bigger reach than most other sponsors…

"To some extent being able to advertise around perimeters levels the playing field: anyone can do that, it’s just a question of how much money you have."

'Proper' marketing, however, to borrow Grannell’s phrase, requires a keen sense of timing - as he explains with the help of a suitably athletic analogy.

"If we get our marketing right in terms of when we start, what we do and how we do it," he says, "then we stand a much better chance of getting the cut-through that we’re looking for.

"But it does mean you have to start at just the right time…

"We use, for example, the Olympic Games…as almost this kind of slingshot effect.

"It’s an accelerator.

"If you think about someone who’s throwing the hammer at the Olympic Games, the ones that go the furthest are the ones who get it in the right direction, who release that hammer just at the critical moment.

"What we try to do in our marketing is to find that moment and then use the Games as the sort of accelerator device to move our business into maybe slightly different areas, or move our business quicker than what we would have done without the Games being there.

"So we will activate all the channels that we have at our disposal to make that slingshot effect the most effective.

"That’s how we approach it here."

As it turns out, this all-important "moment" is fast approaching when it comes to activation of Visa’s rights as presenting partner of Team 2012, the ground-breaking initiative bringing together the British Olympic Association. LOCOG, UK Sport and the British Paralympic Association in an effort to plug a £50 million shortfall in funding for British athletes hoping to compete in the London 2012 Olympics.



"We are getting to that slingshot moment," Grannell says.

"It’s been too soon to activate it publicly because you need to get the public in the right frame of mind.

"But we are approaching that time; we are not too far away.

"At that moment, you will see us doing some quite exciting and different things with this team to bring it to life.

"I think what we said to the joint venture was, we want to make this team - Team 2012 - famous.

"We want to bring it to the attention of the public so that they understand who these people are and what it is that they do and what they’ve had to do to get to the Games, so that when somebody is standing and they are just about to pull the arrow in the archery, or someone is just about to do a BMX bike ride, or whatever it might be, we know who they are...

"We’ll bring them to life.

"The opportunity to do that in terms of media channels is far easier now than ever was.

"We have a host of social networking and digital ways in which we can bring these things to life, to get into people’s households, exactly where our customers are."

Grannell goes on in a message likely to gladden the hearts of media sellers with advertising slots to fill:

 

"I think the first activity should be ahead of Christmas - and the idea then is to make it continuous.

"We are not going to stop and start, stop and start.

"We are only 18 months away at that point.

"Once we start we will have to continue it almost on a daily basis…

"We have got to get out there with something that is going to resonate and then keep it going.

"We have got 1,250 athletes to help us keep it going, which is pretty good."

Team 2012, of course, is a UK-only exercise: in other European markets the company looks set to continue with its established Team Visa concept.

As the countdown continues and excitement mounts one can expect retailers, particularly in the UK, to show more and more interest in displaying London 2012-related trademarks at their outlets.

Few will be in a position to become an Olympic sponsor in their own right, but, as Grannell explains, Visa can offer them an alternative way to be able to make use of some Olympic signage.

"Visa gives retailers the chance to have the Olympic marks in their stores at their point of sale," he tells me.

"It needs to be in conjunction with a Visa activity but we can take our composite logo to the point of sale of every retailer in the country that accepts a Visa card - and that is what we are going to try to do."

Visa’s intention is all the more noteworthy given that, as Grannell (pictured) puts it, "This is the first time that there’s been a shopping centre attached to [the Olympic Park]".

He goes on: "You’ve got to walk through it basically to get in - which is obviously an interesting opportunity for Visa…

"We can make sure that the Visa payWave [contactless technology] solution is in as many stores as we possibly can.

"And the Visa messages are along the shopping mall.

"So that has been quite an interesting opportunity for us."

And what about when the waiting is over and the 2012 Games actually begin? What will Visa’s on-site presence actually consist of?

Says Grannell: "We’ll have a slightly different view of life for on-site…

"On-site, we are the only card accepted; the only way you can pay on-site is a Visa card or cash.

"So on-site needs to be fantastic in terms of the payment experience that you have.

"It needs to be quick.

"We’re on about ‘Higher, Faster, Stronger’ here…

"So we’ll put in lots and lots of point-of-sale devices and they will all be electronic and they will all take our contactless payWave card to get the speed and the security and the efficiency.

"And anybody who wants to have a Visa card experience on site, we will give them one."

He says: "We’ll certainly be introducing our contactless technology, both on cards and hopefully in telephones…

"And then we’ll bring in our customers from around the world and they’ll see what this environment looks like in this kind of electronic, payWave place."

To give an idea of how quickly Visa expects to be processing payments in 2012, Grannell draws another of his athletics analogies.

"Back in 1988, which was [Visa’s] first summer Games," he says, "Ben Johnson did his stuff down the 100 metres in 9.79 seconds, at least before he was stripped of his title.

"If you think about the UK, the High Street and shopping in 1988 and how we shopped, chances are most people would get out a cheque book and a cheque card, or if they were using a Visa card, it would be a zip-zap and a voice authorisation.

"So probably in those 9.79 seconds, we were doing a handful of electronic, fully-authorised transactions.

"Literally a handful.

"A very short time later - 2012 - when Usain Bolt ambles down that 100 metres in 9.6something seconds, we’ll have done thousands and thousands [of transactions].

"From almost zippo to that many."

Olympic sponsors, it seems, are capable of boosting their performance levels much more rapidly than Olympic athletes.

David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938

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