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August 2007 - Strategy Magazine
Who to watch

Going for gold: Visa's Brenda Woods
Visa's Brenda Woods is making sure her brand's Olympic sponsorship stands out from the crowd

by Annette Bourdeau
page 38

With countless brands aboard the Olympic sponsorship bandwagon, it's not easy to carve out unique territory. But Visa Canada's VP marketing, Brenda Woods, just might have figured out how to pull ahead of the pack with a distinct sponsorship property called Team Visa. The program entails long-term support of 19 athletes, as well as financial, media and sports mentoring from financial advisors and retired Olympic athletes like runner Bruny Surin. Visa has begun running vignettes featuring each athlete on TSN for a year leading up to next summer's Beijing Olympics to foster public interest and support.

"We know that our Olympic sponsorship differentiates us from our competitors. But we also have to keep in mind there's a lot of other Olympic sponsors who have their messages out there, too," explains Woods. "[What separates us is that] we're there for the long haul."

She says the mandate of Team Visa - helping amateur athletes achieve their Olympic dreams - is in line with Visa's core brand message of giving people the ability to make things happen. The program was first developed for the Torino Winter Olympics last year, and is now being stepped up for Beijing.

Woods is very focused on leveraging sponsorships in a unique way. In 1996, she led Visa's sponsorship of the Toronto International Film Festival. "We have a lot of support sponsorships, and we wanted to reach a different audience in a different way. So we worked with the festival to provide cardholders' benefits," she says. Since what people find most valuable at the fest is getting tickets, the program sets aside a certain number of tickets exclusively for Visa cardholders. "What we're looking for is a meaningful link," says Woods. The program is still going strong, and will be in place at next month's festival.

Last year, Visa ran a similar pilot program at Montreal's Just for Laughs Comedy Film Festival, Comedia. It was deemed a success, and this year's sponsorship for the July festival was stepped up a notch, with Visa signing on as the presenting sponsor.

With an increasingly competitive landscape that includes the arrival of Capital One, Woods and her team have had to get crafty about how Visa - which has over 29 million cards issued in Canada - maintains its growth rate.

In the 2002 holiday season, Woods launched the "Win What You Buy" program, which proved to be very popular. During the launch year, one person a day won their Visa purchases from the previous month.

"Our competitive environment became much more intense...so we thought: 'What can be the one thing that can tie all of our promotions together?'" she recalls. "[Our research showed] the number-one prize, other than cash, was this idea of winning what you've already bought."

Woods says the program was extremely well received. "Now we use it more tactically, like around the holiday season."

Woods is also focused on identifying under-tapped segments in which to foster growth. Last year, Visa launched a campaign pushing card use at grocery stores. "It's a segment where people knew they could use Visa [but weren't doing often]," says Woods. "We did some research, and tested, for example, Win What You Buy. But it wasn't a strong enough incentive to change behaviour, while winning free groceries for a year was." The grocery focus has been supported by creative media executions by Toronto-based AOR Leo Burnett, including transit shelters filled with grocery items.

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