London 2012 Olympic Games: a digital triumph - The Guardian (blog)

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A record number of spectators attended the London 2012 Olympic Games. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

What makes a good Olympic Games great?

Four years ago I was speaking to the organisers of the Sydney Games to see what communications lessons we could learn from what, until London 2012, was considered the most successful Games ever.

Sydney had gone down as the ultimate sporting party, and had allowed the world to look at Australia in a new light. I was trying to work out, from a government point of view, what kind of Games we wanted London to be.

There were three lessons I took from Sydney:

First, a successful few weeks of sport is not enough – a Games can be so much more. You hear this time and again from every city that hosts a major sporting event. So from the outset, we were determined to put plans in place that were ambitious enough to match Locog and the government's wildest dreams of success in 2012. That could turn a good Games into a great Games, and make sure that people are not just talking about it for decades to come, but feeling the benefits too.

For communications, one of the main challenges in the first few years was convincing people just how big this would be, and how big an opportunity for the country. By the time we got to "super Saturday" or "thriller Thursday", and the whole country and the media would be united in awe of the Games, it would be too late. The foundations needed to be in place long before.

That's why we were talking tirelessly about legacy right from the start. It was a tough message, with years to go before 2012 Olympics and with the media focus on building the venues and hitting the budget. But it was vital to the government's goals.

And that's why we launched, a year ahead of the Games, a co-ordinated, cross-government campaign – the GREAT campaign – to promote Britain abroad with confidence even in difficult times. Having the confidence to go out to the world and promote what Britain has to offer, during the economic downturn, and through last year's riots, has set us in good stead now we aim to generate £13bn in economic benefits from the combined efforts around London 2012.

And that was the second lesson from Sydney: collective success is the best way of delivering individual triumph for everyone involved. Simplicity of messages and clarity about what you want to say, are crucial.

We brought together staff from every government department across Whitehall to work in one communications directorate. The largest cross government communications operation ever. We had one website, twitter-feed and phone number. One message.

Our priority was simple: remove the barriers to effective collective communication. By creating a culture in which sharing communications was the norm and not the exception, most of the job was done.

This was tough given the scale and complexity of the challenge: 25,000 international and national media over at the Park and thousands more across London; 19 government departments with roles to play delivering the Games; alongside Locog, the GLA and all the sporting bodies. Stakeholders ranged from the Met Office to Health Protection Agency to the utilities, all of which needed to be brought into a co-ordinated structure to maintain consistent messages.

We set up daily director of communication calls with our key partners, Locog, the GLA, the Met and core government departments. We spoke every day throughout the torch and the Games, so we could talk, share, decide and support. By the time of the athlete's parade, more than 125 teleconferences had taken place.

Part of that simplicity for the government was knowing when to speak, and when to be silent. Ahead of the Games, we talked legacy and explained the scale of the challenge ahead. But then it was crucial to provide the space for sport to shine through once the Games started. And how they shone.

The third lesson is, that in terms of communications, it's the two weeks before the Games, when the journalists need copy, but there is no sport, that are the most pressured. We saw it in South Africa in the last world cup when the focus was on crime and security. In Beijing, the focus was on human rights and pollution. In London, our issues were security and transport. We dealt with all of this in communications by putting in place our contingency planning. Our community of communications professionals got us through.

'Don't look back and wish you had done more' was the big warning from Sydney. Could we have done more? Of course there is no limit on what the government still wants to achieve with 2012, but everyone involved in the Games is confident that we have the foundations firmly in place to give London 2012 the lasting legacy that such an incredible Games deserves.

And perhaps the hidden legacy for the government from these Games is that we've got a generation of incredibly talented government communication specialists who have seen the value of this level of collaboration – which can only strengthen the effectiveness of government communications for the future.

Sarah Jones was director of communications at the Government Olympic Executive from 2008, and is deputy director of communications for Government Olympic Communications

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Olympics 2012: A spectacular triumph for London - CNN

The Olympic Stadium in London erupts with a magnificent display of fireworks as the 30th Olympiad of the modern era ends. Britain widely hailed for its staging of 2012 Games, says Simon HooperHooper: All previous doubts over security and cost were brushed aside2012 saw great achievements by male and female athletesOlympics have revitalized London, one year after riots, Hooper arguesEditor's note: Simon Hooper has worked as a journalist covering international news, politics and sports for websites and publications including CNN, Al Jazeera, the New Statesman and Sports Illustrated.

(CNN) -- If voters in the United Kingdom were offered the chance tomorrow, in a snap referendum, to change the name of the nation to "Team GB" the result would hardly be in doubt.

Such is the mood of euphoria fostered by the country's gold medal-winning performers, and London's successful staging of an Olympic Games that some had predicted would become the latest in a long tradition of Great British cockups, that a country more used to wallowing in sporting failure is waking up to the unfamiliar feeling of giving itself a collective pat on the back.

A little more than two weeks ago, London was a city pregnant with angst, the final preparations dogged by a security scandal that required 18,000 military personnel -- almost double the number of British troops currently deployed in Afghanistan -- to be drafted in to guard venues, fears of transport meltdown and lingering arguments over spiralling costs and an uncertain legacy.

Now all of that has largely been pushed aside. Even self-styled sporting skeptics have been forced to abandon all pretense of curmudgeonliness as the nation basks in a self-congratulatory golden glow.

Armed police patrol near the Athlete's Villiage as military personel and extra police were called in to beef up security for the games."Admittedly I'm the guy who wrote that I'd rather drink paint than have to sit in a stand and watch this stuff, but that was last week and the world has since changed," wrote Hugo Rifkind, summing up the endorphin-fueled mood swing in the Times newspaper.

At a constellation of sites clustered around the Greenwich Meridian, London delivered a stellar spectacle that largely ran like clockwork.

The showcase Olympic Park proved an elegant setting as Usain Bolt cemented his claim to be the all-conquering, swaggering sporting icon of his generation by defending his 100- and 200-meter sprint titles, and Michael Phelps confirmed his status as the greatest Olympian in history, adding four golds and two silvers to his total haul of 22 medals.

Usain Bolt won three gold medals at the London Olympics; two individually (100m and 200m) and one in a team event (pictured above -- the men's 4 x 100m relay).Elsewhere, beach volleyball, played out incongruously amid austere ministries of government and not a little sniggering from the stands, served up a novelty hit in a country where beaches are more associated with donkey rides than bikinis, while the city's landmarks and parks offered telegenic backdrops and enthusiastic crowds whenever the games ventured onto the streets, culminating Sunday in a men's marathon bathed in sunshine.

These were an open-minded and progressive games, in which a handful of women from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei competed for the first time, and where the double amputee Oscar Pistorius, nicknamed Bladerunner, bestrode the gap between Olympics and Paralympics, by representing South Africa on the track.

Yet the ultimate success and atmosphere of any major sporting event inevitably hangs on the fortunes of the hosts, and in this regard British competitors could hardly have delivered more.

A tally of 29 gold medals and third place in the medals table represented Team GB's best performance at an Olympiad since 1908, leaving the country's traditional sporting antagonists such as Australia, Germany and France flailing in its wake.

In cycling, London's homegrown hero Bradley Wiggins achieved cult status by riding to victory in the time trial just days after he had become the first British winner of the Tour de France. In the velodrome, home riders raced to seven of the 10 gold medals on offer, prompting frenzied French speculation that the British had developed "magic wheels."

Gold medallist Bradley Wiggins celebrates during the victory ceremony after the men's individual Time Trial Road Cycling.But it was a glorious Saturday night in the main stadium that would be Team GB's defining moment, as heptathlete Jessica Ennis, long jumper Greg Rutherford and 10,000-meter runner Mo Farah all won gold in quick succession.

In the disparate backgrounds of the country's champions, some saw further proof of the sort of self-confident, inclusive society that Danny Boyle had sought to capture in an opening ceremony widely acclaimed as "bonkers and eccentric" but dismissed as "multicultural crap" by one right-wing lawmaker.

Asked by a journalist whether he would prefer to be representing his country of birth, Farah, who left war-torn Somalia for London when he was a young boy and who would subsequently also stride to gold in the 5,000 meters, seemed to sum it up: "Look, mate, this is my country. This is where I grew up, this is where I started life. This is my country and when I put on my Great Britain vest, I'm proud. I'm very proud."

Team GB's Mo Farah celebrates winning the gold medal in men's 10,000m final with Dathan Ritzenhein of the United States.Still, others also drew quiet inspiration from the performance of the flame-haired and freckled Rutherford. "Seeing a ginger in the Olympics #hope," one teenager posted on Twitter.

Even some of the Games' gaffes would prove triumphant vignettes. If all that was missing from the faux-green and pleasant land of Boyle's tone-setting re-imagining of British history was a village idiot, the Olympic Village soon found a ready-made one in the bumbling figure of Boris Johnson.

Photographed stranded on a zipwire high over east London, wearing an unflattering blue safety helmet and clutching a pair of Union flags, London's maverick mayor proved himself immune to politics' normal gravitational laws, returning to Earth to dodge questions about whether his "good Olympics" had fueled prime ministerial ambitions.

"How could anybody elect a prat who gets stuck on a zip wire?" was Johnson's knowingly self-deprecating reply.

For a city of London's stature and international reputation, it might have surprised some observers that pessimists and doomsayers had been so confidently vocal in the buildup to the games.

But British administrators had previous history of delivering dismally on grand projects, from the debacle of the unloved Millennium Dome -- re-purposed for the games as a basketball and gymnastics arena -- to the lengthy, budget-busting delays in rebuilding the Wembley football stadium, and the scrapping of plans to host the 2005 world athletics championships.

The queen and senior royals wave to the crowds from Buckingham Palace after the service of thanksgiving at St.Paul's Cathedral celebrating Her Majesty's reign of 60 years.Even Queen Elizabeth II's rain-soaked Golden Jubilee in June, endured with stiff upper lip stoicism by monarch and monarchists alike, appeared to offer a foretaste of grim gray skies and the embarrassing spectacle of a once mighty imperial power in perpetual decline.

More seriously, preparations for the games were inextricably linked to the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people just one day after the city had celebrated winning hosting rights. Nagging fears of a further atrocity would justify a heavy-handed security operation that included the deployment of warships in the Thames, rocket batteries on rooftops and a no-fly zone in the skies overhead, and the confiscation of family picnics at the entry to Olympic sites.

Ultimately though, the games can be judged to have delivered a cathartic and regenerative moment for a city which just one year ago found itself under scrutiny for the wrong reasons amid the worst urban unrest in decades.

If the face of London then was of a hooded looter clutching a stolen television, now the legions of purple-shirted volunteers, widely hailed as the heart and soul of the games, have become ambassadors for a society seemingly more at ease with itself in all its colors and contradictions.

Thousand of Olympic volunteers have spent the past two weeks helping with all aspects around the Games with endless enthusiasm.Whether that spirit of goodwill can be kept alive when the afterglow has faded and Britons wake up to headlines about their worsening economic problems and a coalition government in deepening disarray remains to be seen.

The wider United Kingdom, which mostly seemed to put regional rivalries and London-bashing aside for the duration of the games, still faces the existential threat posed by the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, though the sight of gold medal-winning Scots such as Andy Murray and Chris Hoy posing with Union flags will have done no favours to the nationalist cause north of the English border.

Attempting to make snap historical sense of seemingly seismic shifts in national mood is also a notoriously fickle business, and in the UK in particular there should be a wariness of getting caught up too exuberantly in the moment.

The collective outpouring of grief that followed the death of Princess Diana in 1997 is now looked back on by many with bemusement, as is the brief "Britpop" moment of the mid-1990s, dubbed "Cool Britannia" by Vanity Fair magazine, which soon lost its lustre, exposed as a feeble parody of British music's 60s heyday.

Other countries to have experienced a similar bounce in fortunes on the back of sporting triumph have also struggled to cling to the moment. France's celebrated victory on home soil at the 1998 World Cup, achieved by a team of black, white and Arab footballers, was widely hailed as a watershed moment for multiculturalism there, but few were still talking so complacently about social integration by the time the banlieues exploded into rioting in 2005.

Fans of the home side, Team GB, wave Union Jack flags during the Olympic GamesLondon's organizers, keen to distance themselves from the awesome projection of China's growing power put on by Beijing in 2008, were always modest about their expectations, choosing to draw instead on the spirit of the city's post-war "Austerity Games" in 1948 by pledging to host an event humbler in scale than its predecessor but warmer in tone.

But, above and beyond that, the city triumphed in putting on a show rich in human spirit at its most optimistic that will shine with luminosity in the collective memory long after the extinguishing of the flame.

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