Respected Olympic bid marketing veteran Terrence Burns of Teneo Sports has been named as Chief Marketing Officer for the Los Angeles 2024 Olympic bid.
Burns is known for his instrumental work in many successful Olympic bid campaigns including Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014. He also played a key role in bringing the 2018 Olympic Winter Games to PyeongChang, South Korea and the 2018 FIFA World Cup to Russia.
More recently he worked on failed bids for Madrid 2020 and Almaty 2022 and he currently serves on the Board of the United States Luge Association.
Burns will be responsible for directing the bid’s marketing and promotional activities in order to help to bring the Games back to the United States for the first time in 28 years. He will work closely with LA 2024 Chairman Casey Wasserman, CEO Gene Sykes and the entire bid team and United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to develop and promote the LA 2024’s brand throughout the Olympic Movement.
On the appointment Wasserman said “for the past six months, Terrence has been a valuable advisor to our team, lending his marketing savvy and experience with the Olympic Movement to get our young bid off to a quick start.”
“It’s a tremendous honor to work alongside Mayor Garcetti, Casey, Gene, Olympian Janet Evans and the entire LA 2024 team of professionals to help bring the Olympic Games back to a city whose ingenuity helped transform the Games twice before,” said Burns in a statement released by the bid committee.
“Los Angeles is a city that constantly reinvents itself by answering the question, ‘what is next?’ As a Candidate City, our goal is to harness that unique, Californian spirit of reinvention to help the Olympic Movement create a new Olympic Games for a new Olympic era.”
In the industry Burns is known as an eloquent storyteller who uniquely encapsulates the “why?” behind his bid clients’ desire to play host to the Games. He has helped produce memorable bid presentations which are often important differentiators between rival cities. In his most recent work with the Almaty 2022 Olympic Winter Games bid campaign Burns was credited with creating the “Keeping it Real” slogan – a message that was delivered in response to International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach’s Agenda 2020 set of reforms addressing sustainability and legacy.
Los Angeles is competing with Budapest, Paris and Rome for the right to host the 2024 Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will elect a winner September 2017.
