“If Inmarsat works on the back of one of these boats, it will work on an aircraft carrier.”
The Volvo Ocean Race attracts both consumer brands and B2B brands as sponsors. For Inmarsat, a wholesaler, whose product is out of sight, 33,000 kms in space, the Volvo Ocean Race a way to demonstrate the system in the worst possible conditions.
We caught up with Chris McLaughlin, Vice President of External Affairs at Inmarsat to understand what the Volvo Ocean Race delivers.
The fundamental for Inmarsat is to demonstrate how its system operates in the worst possible conditions. You can’t get much worse than the back of a 70 foot yacht dissapearing into a wave and still try and get television pictures and data off it.
We’ve participated in this race for 3 editions now and we have stepped up our technology each time.
We’ve gone from technology for safety and positioning through systems that provided just 64 Kilobits per second off the back of the boat, to broadband systems that provided 500 kilobits per second last time around.
For this race, it’s all Fleet broadband and a new satellite phone which is in the rescue bags of all the crews and we hope they don’t have to use it and we are already positioning ourselves for the next race when we will launch Global xpress
Global xpress is the next generation Inmarsat 5 sattelites which will launch at the end of 2013. The dome on the back of the boat will be a similar size, and perhaps a bit lighter, but will provide 50 megabits per second which will be a massive step-change.
We now see ourselves as a family member parter of this race. It’s a proven technology. We are not a household brand, so we are not going to be swept up in the dockside presence, but we do see ourselves as a deliverer of the race.
We stepped up this year to race partner, which was a significant change for us – providing a cash investment and not just satellite airtime.
50 megabits will be transformational for the sport.
Racing sailboats must be a pretty small proportion of Inmarsat’s Revenue?
We have been extensively deployed by the milliatary and our biggest customer is the US department of Defense and we work with many other governments around the world.
You could say that Global xpress is the result of a need by the US Department of Defense which the rest of the world will get to tap into and which ultimately the Volvo Ocean Race will be a beneficiary of.
Are there technology transfer and R&D Benefits?
Very much so. We work closely with a group called livewire who actually prepare all the media crew member’s kits. We’ve learnt a lot about video compression from the experience of being in extreme conditions.
It evolves all the time. People want more bandwidth, more connectivity, more of the ability to operate anywhere and we operates in a lot of places where no other network exists.
Do you participate in other offshore events?
You will find that most of the key Vendee Boats, and indeed the new MOD70 boats are fitting Fleet Broadband as a matter of course. They haven’t come to us for a major sponsorship like the Volvo Race, principally because they see the buying of the airtime as part of their sponsor package.
They are competing with each other, so unlike the Volvo, they don’t necesarily want other boats to get what they have got.
From a business point of view, it is difficult for us. When should you do a major sponsorship – give away airtime that otherwise you would make money on.
The Volvo solves a lot of our issues because we are involved with the race and not just a single boat. We wouldn’t have the money to run a single boat campaign, but we do have the ability to make a major difference to the race.
How’s the most recent edition of the race measure up?
The momentum is building. I think with the French and Chinese participation, you will see more boats next time around.
It is an impressive, formula 1 style environment. The best racers are gravitating towards it, after the mess that is the America’s cup and it is probably the premier event from the perspective of the pro crews, because it is solid employment for about 18 months.
Activation must be different for Inmarsat than PUMA or CAMPER
We don’t put much in the media value. It’s nice to get media coverage, but we see this as very much an opportunity to talk to our distributors around the world and our customers. To show them how our platform can be deployed in a different way.
It also gives us a platform from which to have a set of smaller, discreet meetings around the world.
There are some issues. The new bribery act in the UK is going to have an impact on sponsorship of this nature.
Similarly in the US where we have key partners like the US Department of the Defence – they now have a rule that they can’t accept entertainment over $25. This is a difficult to manage, but we can do dockside meetings, with the backdrop of the race and buy someone a cup of coffee.
We’ll be testing out the cup of coffee approach in Miami. It might also include a sticky-bun, but probably won’t go much further than that.
Does the structure of Inmarsat make it hard to sell?
We are the network wholesaler. We don’t sell direct, so this is a rare opportunity to remind people that what they are all selling is us. We are selling something that is 33,000 km out in space in a geosynchonus orbit and you can’t see feel or touch it and the only manifestation is a control room in London. Very hard to breathe alive, but Volvo Ocean Race does that for us.
