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What’s the brand plan? Games boss wants to nail the essence of Brisbane

The 2032 Olympics in Brisbane is in search of an identity and has sent advertising agencies into a scramble to deliver an embryonic one by October 19.

Oct 06, 2022, updated Oct 07, 2022
Brisbane 2032 Olympics organising committee president Andrew Liveris  (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Brisbane 2032 Olympics organising committee president Andrew Liveris (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

The tender for the Games brand strategy was released overnight giving agencies two weeks to deliver a raft of strategies as the organising committee president Andrew Liveris said he doesn’t know yet what that Games will look like, but that process was now in motion.

That brand “is the vision of the future”.

“What’s our brand that markets and sells all of us to the world?” Liveris said.

“Our brand has to deliver. We have to do it in traditional ways like hospitality packages, but (also) the notion of it being a value stream that we can go and market ourselves.

“It goes to the private funding model. LA has found innovative ways to get companies to come on board.”

Former Olympic swimmer Liesel Jones said her idea for the Games was to have a strong First Nations theme and to find someone an indigenous Nikki Webster, who was the child star of the Sydney opening ceremony.

Liveris has begun a roadshow, starting with Brisbane yesterday and Sunshine Coast today, to sell the Games to business and community groups and he said the committee was now working together with governments “to understand what 2032 will look like”.

“The foundational planning process is what we are in motion to do. Doing roadshows with the board is critical. It’s listening carefully to the people of Queensland.

He said internationally, Australia was known as Sydney and Melbourne and there was task to make Queensland a known asset.

The “deliverables” in the tenders include the brand strategy, market research to inform values and aspirations, a brand emblem and even business cards, programs and imagery.

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Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told the Sunshine Coast business function that the Sydney Olympics created massive opportunity for businesses and cited the example of a once-small company on the NSW Central Coast that went on to provide stadium seating for Sydney’s Olympic stadium and Atlanta’s Games as well.

She said just as it was shaping business opportunities it was also shaping the athletes, and used the example of the Queensland Academy of Sports being “blown away” after recently finding two schoolboys on Thursday Island who could run the 100 metres in 11 seconds, barefoot.

One aspect that was taking shape was the role technology would play but Sunshine Coast mayor Mark Jamieson said it seemed likely that the audience would be able “to insert themselves into the race” and become virtual competitors.

Liveris said bidders to create the Games brand should approach the task with some subtlety, citing Barcelona’s efforts in 1992 to become a tourist hot-spot.

“Who do we want to be? Answer that and then design the symbols and emblems that go with it,” he said.

“It’s not the other way around. I can go with a surfboard or a koala bear, but that’s just a symbol of our geography and our location.

“Who are we as a people, and what do we aspire to be?

“These are the sorts of things that the top brand marketers will tell you are really what matter today.”

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