This September saw the undertaking of NI Business Intelligence’s fourth wave of London 2012 research, this time taking a particular look at the Paralympics, and at the differences in opinion between those who did, and didn’t get tickets for the Olympic Games themselves.

Overall – across all respondents - we’ve seen excitement about the forthcoming games remain largely constant wave-on-wave with 35% currently scoring themselves at least 7 out of 10 in terms of excitement (w1 = 19%, w2 = 34%; w3 = 33%). However, when we look only at those who applied for tickets and got at least some of what they wanted this proportion increases to almost 90%. Indeed, excitement even amongst the potentially disgruntled group who applied for tickets and didn’t get anything is still relatively high at 62%.

One in four are excited about the Paralympic Games (for which ticket application was open during the survey period) despite just 4% of respondents saying they are actually applying, or planning to apply for tickets.

From a sponsorship point of view, the more excited the individual, the more likely they are to notice partner brands – and importantly, the more positive they claim to be about them. This is borne out by the fact that prompted awareness of official partner brands has increased wave-on-wave in the vast majority of cases.

The top five most recognised Olympic partner brands remain unchanged, and posted an average 7% point increase in awareness since the last survey in February this year. However, from the point of view of the Paralympic partners there is some work yet to be done – average prompted awareness is markedly lower than for the Olympic partner brands (despite many of them being linked to both events), and there is significant misattribution with a number of brands potentially benefitting from the halo effect that their Olympic partnership brings.

The topics around the Games in which people are most interested revolve around the athletes themselves, with a notable if unsurprising bias towards GB competitors. However, glamour aside, there is also considerable interest in the impact the Games will have on a local scale, as well as the infrastructure being created to support the event.

Given the variety of categories and sponsorship labels adopted by the partner brands they all have their own niche to fill and role to play, but when asked which of the Olympic ‘values’ they deem most important, our respondents ranked the development of young British talent, encouraging healthier lifestyles and stronger communities most highly.

With around 300 days to go until the torch is lit in the stadium there are many points at which public interest will be incrementally heightened, but the fact that recognition of partners keeps increasing is testament to the effective activation strategies employed by many already… time for the chasing pack to go the extra mile!