VANOC slow to get into new media game

Kris Krug is among a small group of Vancouver new media trailblazers aiming to revolutionize how the Olympic Games are covered in this wild Web 2.0 world.

They have devised the True North Media House, and they say it will also be strong and free.

It’s going to be a Downtown Eastside-based alternative for outlets big and small that don’t qualify to be inside the fence at the main media centre in the Vancouver Convention Centre or in the non-accredited provincial facility at Robson Square.

“With the explosive growth of online journalism, citizen journalism and new forms of journalism, we’re going to have huge demand for the services we’re offering there,” Krug said.

The concept was borne out of meetings last fall among disaffected members of the local new media community. Early on, VANOC was wide-eyed about the new media. Krug and others briefed VANOC executives and staff on a new media day back in 2005. But as the Games approached, things changed.

I remember Krug sitting crestfallen outside the Pan Pacific Hotel last November, ruing the fact that VANOC didn’t let him join in the world press briefing. That week, his Raincity Studios’ colleague Dave Olson extended a hand with his famous “Hello VANOC, we’re nice, local and invite you for a coffee and a talk” open letter.

Any VANOC forays into the virtual world have been on the coattails of telecommunications sponsor Bell. The Cultural Olympiad’s intriguing Canada CODE digital collage is the best example. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are used by many individuals at VANOC, but not VANOC itself.

The reluctance apparently comes from top-down. The IOC has tiptoed around the Internet, not fully embracing the new media. To its credit, it opened its own YouTube channel during the Beijing Games while liberalizing its rules to allow athlete blogs. Krug said the IOC’s top Canadian, Dick Pound, told him that the Internet is the second-biggest threat to the Olympics movement, after performance-enhancing drugs.

“They haven’t figured out how to harness the Internet, so they view it as a cannibalization of their broadcast revenues,” he said. “By not figuring out ways to engage the media, particularly the new media, they’re missing out on a whole generation.”

So Krug is intent on showing the IOC the potential.

“We have lots of people who are stoked abut it. You might have a Swedish ski blogger, and we’ll have the Christians blogging about Christians in the Olympics,” he said. “We’ll have other people who are probably anti-Olympics there, too. It’s like a big house, and everyone’s welcome in. It’s about open access for all these locked out, independent new media.”

Driving for dollars

VANOC buckled up and put on its bravest face the day General Motors finally went bankrupt.

“I call it the ideology of the duck: calm and serene on the surface and pedalling underneath,” said Simon Fraser University marketing professor Lindsay Meredith.

The Games’ organizer threw around its usual catchword – “confidence” – when the Canadian division of the depressed Detroit dowager reaffirmed its support June 1 simultaneously with its New York chapter 11 filing.

GM pledged $53 million in vehicles and $14 million in cash in 2005 to become the Games’ official vehicle supplier. The future looked cloudy, but nobody then forecast a $173 billion debt that would need government bailouts on both sides of the border.

GM ditched its hospitality plan, but still may buy Games-time advertising. Meredith said to watch closely how creditors react to things like the continued sponsorship of General Motors Place. That $18.5 million deal runs through 2015.

“If bankruptcy creditors come in and say I want that cash, then just watch how quickly that name will fly off,” Meredith said.

The building will temporarily be known as Canada Hockey Place next February because of IOC anti-venue advertising rules. •

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Business in Vancouver June 9-15, 2009; issue 1024

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