Now that the 2012 Olympic bid applicant cities have submitted the required responses to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) questionnaire the bid committees can relax and wait for the short-list announcement due at SportAccord on May 18, 2004 – right? Not really.
The work has just begun. Sure, the IOC has all of the material it needs to produce a preliminary technical analysis on which it will base its short-list decision, but if a bid city expects to remain competitive should it be chosen as a candidate in the spring, it must continue to power forward. The full bid books that are due from candidates in November are very detailed and contain hundreds of pages so the committees won’t have enough time if they wait to see if they are on the short-list.
The period between now and the short-list announcement will also be critical in other ways. Since committees are forbidden from any international marketing until the full bid books have been submitted, they will concentrate on very important local marketing activities that are designed to raise public and corporate support. The bid books report public opinion polling results to the IOC and the IOC will also conduct its own polling during the candidate evaluation phase next spring, so the results will be clearly visible.
Local preparations are already visible. London has launched a major local advertising campaign and London 2012 pins and souvenirs have been circulating. Leipzig and New York have also established a local presence with merchandising and branding – mainly because of heir already established national nomination bids. Interestingly, reports from Havana say that there is very little local knowledge of their 2012 bid and that coincides with the wide opinion that Cuba will not be selected as a candidate.
Additionally, bid committees will be working on raising funds through corporate sponsorships, without which the committees would be forced to use public funds to drive their bids. Using public funds would risk the erosion of public support and most bids will try to avoid this exposure.
The confident bid committees may also prepare for the final phase of the campaign and develop their important international marketing push when they try to appeal to international media with the hope of reaching the 125 IOC members spread worldwide. During this phase the candidate cities will receive the IOC evaluation commission as guests and the commission will tour the city, its venues and be immersed in the local culture.
Often cities go to extreme measures by using large banners, schedule public events, and through other aesthetic improvements. When the IOC visited Beijing in March during its 2008 bid, officials painted the dull city grass green to improve the experience.
Although there seems to be quiet periods in the two-year long campaign you can be sure that behind the scenes the 2012 bid committees are always working toward the July 5, 2005 election.
