New IRB chief Brett Gosper intends giving rugby the Olympic touch
Exclusive: Glenda Korporaal
The Australian July 23, 2012 12:00AM
WORLD rugby has a lot to learn from the Olympic movement, particularly where marketing is concerned, according to the new chief executive of the International Rugby Board, Australian Brett Gosper.
The London-based Gosper, son of Australia's International Olympic Committee member Kevan Gosper, says the IOC has astutely managed the Olympic brand and been able to introduce changes to keep it relevant, such as new sports and events including the Youth Olympics.
"The overall goal of the IRB is to make the sport as attractive as possible for spectators and participants," Gosper said in an exclusive interview with The Australian in London yesterday. "The brand management of rugby itself is what interests me.
"You could look at the way the Olympic brand is managed," said Gosper, who was most recently the chief executive of Europe, the Middle East and Africa for McCann Erickson, the world's largest advertising agency.
"It is brilliantly managed. They have a logo, the five rings, which has made them known the world over, they have a slogan which is about not winning but taking part and they have the heritage and the very visual experience.
"The world is in love with the Olympics as an event. There are some lessons to be learned in the way they manage their brand, and the way they make their brand attractive to different demographics and different people."
Gosper, who is set to take on the Dublin-based role from August 13, said Australia was among the most challenging markets for rugby.
He said the situation in Australia, where rugby struggles for public attention in the face of very strong competition from rugby league and AFL, was an anomaly, because the game was in a healthy state elsewhere.
"Rugby is in a very healthy state from all criteria in most markets whether you are talking about the UK, France, it is growing in the US and Argentina. There is a lot of interest in Russia and there is a lot of growth in some eastern European countries. It is a growth sport in both the established and the developing markets.
"Australia is an anomaly because of the competition in the market. It is a tough market for rugby union because of the entrenched competition from some very established and aggressive competitors."
Gosper said he could understand some of the debate in Australia about the need to change the scrum rules given the competition from rugby league and AFL.
"I grew up in Sydney watching rugby league every weekend and I went to school in Melbourne at Scotch College, which is the school which invented Australian football.
"I know these sports intimately and I understand why that raises rules debates in the context of Australia."
But he would not be drawn into commenting on his personal views on potential rule changes.
Gosper, a hard-running centre in his youth, finished high school in Melbourne but moved to Queensland to play club rugby. He played for Victoria and Queensland in the 1980s.
At the age of 21 he went to France to play rugby and stayed for 13 years, working for advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather in Paris while continuing to play.
He went on to develop a career in advertising, running McCann Erickson's US agency before moving to London to run its operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Gosper believes his combination of marketing skills from 30 years in the advertising world and his passion for rugby helped secure him the IRB's top job, which has been vacant since the resignation of Englishman Mike Miller, who stepped down after last year's World Cup in New Zealand.
His immediate challenges include overseeing the organisation of the next World Cup, which will be in London in 2015, and the entry of sevens rugby into the Olympics in Rio in 2016.
"The IRB was the organisation which pushed for the Sevens to be a sport in the Olympics," he said.
"The Olympics is a great spotlight for the sport."
