George Hirthler SportsTravel magazine

When Beijing was awarded the right to host the 2008 Olympic Summer Games in July, the vote was more decisive than many had expected. Beijing needed only two rounds of voting to acquire the simple majority of votes necessary to win the bid. Beijing’s weaknesses as a candidate included its history of human rights violations and its less-than-rigorous policies on intellectual property rights. But Beijing made a strong case in its final bid presentation before the IOC. Much of the credit can be given to a brand communications firm based in Atlanta, Georgia. Helikon Media, founded by George Hirthler and Terrence Burns, put together a communications game plan for Beijing that addressed and surmounted the city’s apparent weaknesses. Hirthler was no stranger to the bid process. He participated in four previous Olympic bid efforts, including a lead role in Atlanta’s successful bid for the 1996 Games. In an interview with SportsTravel’s Al Austin, Hirthler discusses the preparation for his work on the bid, his interactions with the Beijing bid committee and his belief that the Games will bring monumental change to the globe’s most populous nation.

Hirthler: I got a call from Susan Watson, who had served on the Atlanta bid committee and who has a consulting company here in Atlanta. She said that Dr. David Chu from Hong Kong—one of the primary architects of sport in China—was coming through to do research on behalf of the Beijing bid committee. I met with Dr. Chu and we discussed my experience with bid efforts and my thinking on China’s campaign. I met with the executive committee of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee two weeks later to discuss their communications strategy and how we could help. We were engaged from that point on.

Hirthler: After the Salt Lake scandal broke and the IOC suspended visits of members to cities, the bid process turned basically into a communications campaign. For the 2008 campaign, that meant that the work of the evaluation commission was the primary foundation for making judgments on how qualified the cities were to host the Games.

SportsTravel: How did you research and prepare for the Beijing effort apart from the experience you’d gained with previous bids?

Hirthler: We read everything we could on China. We read their Web site thoroughly and looked at the Web sites of Paris, Toronto, Istanbul and Osaka—although we focused on Toronto and Paris as the principal competitors.

Hirthler: We went back to them with strategic recommendations. The first was to engage in a global communications campaign with specific key messages about how China is changing and how the Olympic Games would accelerate that change. The second recommendation was to hire a global PR firm. We ended up recommending the firms and negotiating the contracts with them, and helping to steer and guide their work in helping the media to develop a dialogue on China’s bid. The media had basically been covering the Beijing bid from one viewpoint—that of the human rights critics.

Within three months, we had raised a second viewpoint in the media through key spokespeople and the dissemination of press releases—that China should get the Games because the Games would help bring about the changes that the critics were calling for. Our central message was simple: Engagement is better than isolation. Conversation leads to change. We pushed the fact that during the seven-year preparation period for the Games, there would be thousands of trips in and out of China from various people. Our central argument was that through that sports-related travel, change would be inspired and accelerated in China.

SportsTravel: What other obstacles stood in the way of Beijing winning the bid?

Hirthler: China had little experience in communicating with Western media. One of their weaknesses for their 2000 bid was a lack of understanding of the expectations of Western media. Our objective was to create an environment in global media in which the IOC could feel comfortable making the decision to take the Games into Beijing. By the way, I believe this is the most courageous decision the IOC has made in the last 20 years.

The environment was another challenge. So experts from China developed environmental plans for Beijing. Beijing has committed $12.2 billion over the next seven years to 20 separate environmental projects. For example, they’ve already transformed one-third of the city’s fuel sources and heating from coal to natural gas, and that process is continuing.

Hirthler: Once the city wins the right to host the Games, it has a six-month period from the day they sign as the host committee to transform into an Olympic committee for organizing the Olympic Games. They will call that one BOCOG, or the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games.

SportsTravel: A poll conducted by Chinese authorities indicated that more than 90 percent of people interviewed in China are enthusiastic about hosting the Games. Do you think there is this level of support?

Hirthler: Each bid city presents a statement about what surveys indicate about public support within their country. The IOC then does its own assessments confidentially through the Gallup organization. Of the five cities that were bidding, four had basically exaggerated the public support when compared to the IOC’s findings. Only one city had greater support in the IOC’s findings than in the city’s own findings, and that was Beijing. Beijing had claimed to have 94.9 percent public support for the Games. The IOC’s polls came up with 96 percent.

While in China, I never encountered anybody who wasn’t enthusiastic, from the waitresses to the drivers who took us around town, to people at the sports facilities, to the hotels. I don’t think we in the West can understand how meaningful the awarding of the Olympic Games is to China. They really feel like it has in many ways affirmed their arrival as one of the great nations. I think they will really put a lot into these Games. It’s very clear when you visit Beijing that capitalism is transforming that country already. All the people I met loved business and talking about business and doing business. I think that business and capitalism and the business of sport in particular will help to transform that country and its economic opportunity, which will ultimately lead to greater human rights and the desire and the ability of the government to raise the standard of living there.

SportsTravel: Were Chinese intellectual property laws a concern for the IOC?

Hirthler: Yes. That’s a great concern with all corporations that do business in China. Over the last five years, in the process of applying for membership in the World Trade Organization, China has signed onto 14 new intellectual property conventions that guide intellectual property rights around the world. One of the clear demonstrations of the strengthening of these laws in China of specific interest to the Olympic community was a case that the Chinese Olympic Committee pursued last year to stop someone from using the word “Olympic” and the rings. They succeeded in the courts. I think that leading up to the Games you’ll see China raise its standards for intellectual property protection to world-class levels.

Hirthler: Safety and security are fundamental human rights. In Beijing, the sense of safety is as great as, if not better than, what we’ve got here in downtown Atlanta. People are friendly, and there’s a great sense of security.

SportsTravel: Were you ever concerned that the reconnaissance plane situation might have a negative effect on the bid?

Hirthler: We thought that it could become a crisis that would have some impact on the IOC’s attitude toward China. I thought that the leadership handled it exceptionally well on both sides. But the fact of the matter is that within the IOC, there is a certain amount of anti-American sentiment. They resented the fact that the U.S. Senate was talking about passing a resolution to oppose the Beijing bid, and rightfully so. The U.S. should not be in a position—and Anita DeFrantz herself said this—to be telling the IOC how to vote on the awarding of the Games. If there were conflicts between the Chinese and U.S. governments, I think it may have enhanced their bid in some ways.

Hirthler: The final presentation. The Beijing team did an excellent job on stage. They were prepared to answer all questions that came up. They conducted excellent press conferences before and after their final presentation. It gave the IOC a sense of personal connection to the bid, because for the first time they had people standing in front of them who were talking on behalf of China.

SportsTravel: Do you think the restrictions on site visits will be lifted by the IOC?

Hirthler: I don’t know. I think it would be valuable to restore them and to let the IOC members visit the cities, in a process controlled by the IOC, and to be able to make their own judgments on the qualities of the potential host city.

Hirthler: They’re still in the process of organizing. We’re very hopeful that our friends at the organizing committee will not forget the valuable contributions we’ve made, and we’re looking forward to working with them for the next seven or eight years.

SportsTravel: How will the Olympic worldwide sponsors leverage themselves for China? What will their strategies be?

Hirthler: It’s pretty early for the sponsors to be thinking about planning. But with the incredible enthusiasm in China, I think most sponsors will want to create an early alignment, perhaps even more than in the past, in order benefit from exposure through association with the organizing effort over the next seven years.

SportsTravel: There are some sports, such as table tennis and badminton, that are popular in China but not in the U.S. How will that be approached in terms of broadcasting?

Hirthler: I don’t know how that will unfold, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see NBC go back to the kind of promotional position they had in 1996, where they air certain sports on cable and the primary marquee sports on the network. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see more Internet access to what might be considered second-tier sporting events in this market, like badminton and table tennis.

Hirthler: Beijing faced far more challenges, particularly in issues of human rights and freedom of the press. In Atlanta, we had the advantage of being able to bring the IOC members on visits to the city. In that case, when they voted, they were voting for people they knew and liked. They trusted their friends with the future of the Games. We also had a compelling story to tell about the racial harmony of Atlanta—its being the birthplace of the civil rights movement and the home of Martin Luther King, Jr.

With Beijing, you have the largest nation on the face of the Earth, with 1.3 billion residents. If the Olympic movement was going to fulfill its charter and its mission—to take sport everywhere in the service of man and the development of a better society concerned with the preservation of human dignity—it really had no choice but to go into China. It will be good for the world. It will be good for China and the Olympic movement, and will certainly contribute to the process of world peace through sport.