As Vancouver prepared for the eyes of the world, Royal Bank of Canada, the country's biggest bank, seeded its staff with nine of the strong, swift and savvy young athletes who are going for gold in the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The roster includes: Kristi Richards, the darling of British Columbia whose medal dreams were shattered by a crash in the moguls Saturday night, Dominique Maltais, the 29-year-old firefighter who finished 29th in Tuesday's Snowboard Cross, and five members of the Canadian women's hockey team.
The arrangement allows the athletes, many of whom don't have the luxury of opulent professional contracts, to get a steady paycheck, while it garners the bank ambassadors who have already won over the nation's 33 million people.
"We know that you can't sell stuff in the Olympic movement unless you have credibility, and this gives us credibility," said Jim Little, RBC's chief brand and communications officer. "Plus, we all think it's a glamorous life, but that's not the case for a lot of these people."
The athletes are paid salaries commensurate with RBC's public relations staff; the bank declined to provide salary figures. Many of the participants are given one-year contracts, but this can vary. For roughly 20 hours a week they commute to the company's regional offices and work on marketing, sponsorship and public relations projects.
Most of the work involves motivational speaking appearances, either in schools or at the offices of RBC clients.
"They treat you like a full-on employee," said Jeff Bean, who narrowly missed a bronze medal in freestyle aerials at the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002.
Bean, 33, is one of about 40 past Olympians in the program. He joined RBC near the end of his competitive athletic life, as he contemplated a new career armed only with ski-waxing experience and a high school degree. He had secured lucrative sponsorship contracts early in his career, but the RBC position was the first time that Bean was required to step into an office, rather than slap a sticker on his helmet or appear in an advertisement.
"It's a completely different thing," he said. "There's an understanding that you really have to work."
Today, Bean manages the bank's Olympic employees full-time and is hoping to become a branch manager. "I just knew that it was an opportunity to get my foot in the door of Canada's biggest bank," he said. "I used it as my retirement-from-sport plan."
The program is becoming competitive in its own right. RBC fielded applications from 250 athletes this year -- all potential, present or past Olympians.
Companies have long signed Olympians to lucrative contracts, and some, like Home Depot, have marketed their employment of nonprofessional athletes. However, RBC's program may be in the vanguard of the financial services world.
RBC, which has about 1,200 branches, also ponied up $110 million to sponsor the Vancouver games, a decision that it made in the depths of the recession and in the face of considerable pushback from shareholders. Much of the money has gone to bankroll the torch relay, which allowed RBC to pitch its home-renovation loans in communities across the country. The loans let residents borrow against the value of their homes in order to finance improvements.
"We just thought that we could drop this ready-packaged and ready-made right into our branch system," Little said. "It's much bigger than marketing and much bigger than we had anticipated."
For months, an RBC "eco-home" toured right alongside the torch, showcasing how Canadians could make environmentally friendly retrofits to their properties.
Because of Canada's regulatory structure, the country has only a fraction of the number of banks as the U.S. has, and financial products and services north of the border are commodities to a great extent. Little said that 15% to 20% of the Canadian banking market is in movement at any one time, which explains RBC's Olympic push to edge out competition.
Canadian bank regulation, however, also helped the country's banks avoid many of the problems that beset their competitors abroad. RBC, for example, boasts some of the industry's highest bond ratings.
In the past two years, the company has used its relative strength to pick up market share in the lower 48 and around the world. Last year, it hired hundreds of wealth managers and investment bankers outside of Canadian borders and it climbed to No. 15 in global M&A revenue, up from the 20th slot in 2006, according to data compiled by Dealogic.
However, RBC refrained from purchasing international broadcast rights for the Vancouver games. Little said that its sponsorship money will provide "a bit of a halo effect" abroad, but this competition is all about RBC winning on the home field.
Less than halfway through the games, RBC's Olympic employees are making the bank proud: Five of the athlete-employees are on the Canadian women's hockey team, which has so far outscored its opponents 41-to-2.
Write to Kyle Stock
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