Media Matters – SFU Business in the News – February 11
Feb 15, 2010
How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending February 11, 2010.
2010 Olympics
- Meanwhile, the Reuters news agency reported to worldwide clients: “The threat of a terror attack on the Vancouver Olympics is considered low but Canada is still spending far more to protect the event than it did to build the venues where athletes will compete.” But Reuters quoted Gerolymatos, who has studied terrorism issues and monitored preparations for the games: “If something happens (C$900 million) wasn’t enough. If nothing happens, it was too much. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.” The story ran in the New York Times. After a disruptive bomb scare at the North Vancouver SeaBus terminal, Gerolymatos was on the Early Edition show on CBC Radio, saying, among other things: “The greatest danger to the games now is lack of snow.” And marketing prof Lindsay Meredith was on the Christy Clark show on CKNW, talking about the role of “the fear factor” in justifying and selling to the public the security precautions put in place at airports, and used for the Olympics.
- Meredith was also in a Toronto Sun story that wondered if the games are as green as portrayed. “You can plaster green on anything you want to, that’s called paint. You’d better have something solid underneath that. . . . A proper audit says: ‘What did you do that’s green? What did that cost you in evil carbon?’ Let’s subtract the negative numbers from positive numbers and see if you’re green or not.”
- The Vancouver Sun looked at the prominent public relations role of Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson around the Games. And it quoted Lindsay Meredith: “Everyone has had to put up with challenges over the past two years. But the Games are close now and when the torch arrives, I think it will transform the city.”
- Another marketing prof from SFU Business, Judy Zaichkowsky, was on Radio Canada talking about the marketing power of the games: “This is fair play, this has a lot of integrity, prestige, positive values . . . that good, big brands want to be associated with. . . . In terms of the opening ceremonies and what is the TV audience, it’s huge, there’s nothing bigger, nothing bigger.”
- SFU Business told media about a new SFU study that shows ambush marketing can cost sponsors of Olympics and other major sporting events both money and customers. The study is from profs Leyland Pitt and Michael Parent from SFU’s Segal Graduate School of Business.
National and World News
- CBC News reported that troubled Intrawest has reached a deal to sell its interests in Florida’s Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort. SFU’s Lindsay Meredith said he doubts Intrawest got much. “That Florida real estate market, as you know, is about as bottom of the barrel as you’re going to get.”