Kiwis steer Games to web glory

By DITA DE BONI

After six months of frequent day trips to Sydney, 16-hour working days and total immersion in all things Olympic, Linda Geary is tired but elated and "overcome, overwhelmed."

The diminutive Aucklander still gets a "bubble in my throat" when the tension and excitement of the Games ignites audiences, despite feeling torn between her attachment for the Kiwi athletes and a recently forged intimacy with the Aussies.

The reason for this passionate outburst is that Ms Geary and a team of New Zealanders from Auckland web development firm Netbyte have just completed the biggest project of their lives - designing, building and hosting the two largest Australian Olympics sites, boxingkangaroo.com.au and olympics.com.au.

Ms Geary - marketing graduate and sports enthusiast - and her team have been steeped in the colourful, expansive and politically charged world of Australian sport since winning the contract to create the sites about six months ago.

"It is amazing that they chose New Zealanders to do it, but it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time," she says with typical national reticence.

"A company I had worked for won an award at the New Zealand online marketing awards, and after talking to some contacts there, I was asked to go to Sydney and meet the Australian Olympic Committee.

"As I was standing there with people like [AOC president] John Coates, I wondered 'what am I doing here?'

"Here are these high-powered people - people who answer to the Australian Minister for Sport - and here is little ol' me, looking like I've just stepped off a street in Ponsonby."

Several contracts to build the sites had already fallen through and the project was "rife with politics."

But Netbyte secured the contract and set to work creating the sites, which now host about a million page impressions a day.

The two sites are different beasts. Olympics.com.au is linked into the AOC database, and features everything anyone could possibly want to know about each member of the Australian team, including shoe size.

Athlete chat and individual participants' diaries are also included, and changes to official data go immediately to the site.

A partnership with Games broadcaster Channel 7 has put $10 million into the development of the news and information repository.

It is about ninth on the ACNielsen/netratings list of the most popular global Olympics-related sites, behind nbc.com and sportsillustrated.com, which are aimed at an American audience.

Boxingkangaroo.com.au is a complementary site designed to whip up a nationalistic fervour and sell kangaroo-branded Olympic paraphernalia, along with interviews, news and photos.

"This is where [viewers] would find the information they wouldn't find anywhere else," says Ms Geary. "It's designed to inspire loyalty and convey the 'attitude' of Australian sports."

Boxing Kangaroo is not an Olympic brand. It is owned by the AOC, and is the "commercial front" to the committee's activities. Users can sign up for an e-mail newsletter, competitions and games, and targeted groups receive caps, T-shirts and other memorabilia as a tie-in to the patriotic marketing thrust.

Ms Geary is finished with the projects now, with only the closing ceremony and Olympians' dinner to attend. She says that while the six months have been like "training for an event, complete with the feeling of 'I've made it!' when it was over," she is happy to report that New Zealand can "foot it with the best" in providing web services to the global market.

She says that, as with all projects, adherence to the basic principles of marketing is the key to creating attractive, user-friendly sites.

"Essentially what we did was develop a marketing and communications solution that was underpinned by technology.

"But the technology is only what we use to deliver our message.

"The websites had to provide information in a clear, easily navigated and value-added way, otherwise they would not be effective."

Apologising for peppering her conversation with the mantras of modern marketing, Ms Geary says she feels passionately that knowledge of how to incorporate electronic media into ad/marketing campaigns has "plateaued' in this country.

"When a company proudly says it has its 'brochure online' it makes me see red," she says.

"With that [approach], there is no thought to building relationships with customers - and I think it says something quite pointed about the company itself.

"Because I am a hybrid person, with a traditional background in agency advertising and direct marketing, I think you have to think of the whole picture - the macro and micro of the whole campaign - instead of just online, because consumers don't just encounter the online world."

She is amazed at how many times tried-and-true marketing basics are thrown out the window when online campaigns are approached, and how many companies describe themselves as "cutting edge" just because they have a website.

"So many companies forget who they are talking to.

"They are sometimes as inward focused as companies that refuse to go online at all."