However, many companies are missing out on this because they are concerned about the serious legal implications for non-official sponsors incorrectly aligning themselves with the event.

While the Olympics is a heavily protected brand, and by all accounts 2012 is going to be one of the most tightly policed games yet, the bulk of the legislation is aimed at proximity ‘ambush’ marketing.

And while brands are right to have their concerns, there are plenty of opportunities to run sport-focused promotions beyond being official sponsors by, for example, moving away from the Games’ location and running innovative on-pack promotions celebrating “the great summer of sport”. 

Direct mail marketers need to look at this challenge as creatively as possible, and as a creative industry this is a not something we should be shying away from.

For those with the courage to think creatively, we have set out the four key stages to planning any Olympic-related direct mail marketing activity.

Plan ahead

The first thing to do is make sure that you enter into the pre-planning stage as soon as possible – with big events like this, the sooner you know what you are doing the better, otherwise you are likely to be left chasing everyone else’s coat tails.

But beyond that, the closer you get to any major sporting event the more expensive any promotional insurance cover will become. For example, we had an insurance quote early last year for one of our clients based on England winning the Football World Cup and it was half that of the cover they eventually had to buy just a month before the event.

While some focus groups are underway, too few brands are planning for the Summer of Sport as yet. There is a real opportunity for UK brands to showcase themselves though direct mail, but they need to start thinking about it now.

Think creatively

There is also a lack of knowledge about how best to creatively devise direct mail promotions to take advantage of this global sporting event.

There are strict legal guidelines in place regarding the use of the word Olympics and the logo in direct mail creative executions, and the London 2012 organisers will be bound to the International Olympic Committee and to its marketing partners to protect against unauthorised use of the Olympic Brand. However, the event still presents opportunities for non-sponsor brands.

Here direct mail marketers can learn major lessons from much of the activity linked to the FIFA World Cup, 2010. Although still bound by the similar legalities surrounding logo and name usage, brands were able to align themselves with the World Cup, despite not being official sponsors. 

For example, Mando helped a major electrics manufacturer run a global promotion offering people that bought their products the chance to win their money back if their country won the “summer’s hottest football tournament”.

Keep it simple

We’ve found that simple direct mail promotions engage more people. For example, stay away from basing your promotion on the performance of specific athletes.

If they are injured your promotion is going to fail and as these things need to be sorted out several months in advance there is no chance of reworking your promotion. The above World Cup example worked well in this way basing the promotion on a country’s performance not an individual’s.

During the last Olympics we ran a promotion for Powerade, which allowed consumers to collect special codes linked to different events. If England won a medal in that event then you could claim a cash prize; simple but effective.

Get the right cover

As the Powerade example also demonstrated, sporting events can be unpredictable, with Team GB bringing home its biggest ever haul of gold medals, and in some unexpected areas.

Had they not taken a Fixed Fee cover the promotion could have ended up costing them more than they had budgeted.

We calculated, based on past history and current performance, the areas where the team were likely to perform better and then managed the number of winning codes in these sports. Based on this we supported Powerade’s promotion for a fixed, one-off figure regardless of the outcome.