Dave Cobb doesn't have a typical marketing background. He spent a good portion of his career on the financial side, getting into the sports world through a CFO position with the Vancouver Canucks. It was there that he got his first taste of marketing, which he was responsible for after a job shift to COO. But, he says, his financial background has proved perfect for handling his current role of EVP and deputy CEO of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), in charge of revenue, marketing and communications.

VANOC was formed after Vancouver won its bid to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to be the host of the 2010 Games back in July 2003. A year after the bid was won, Cobb came on board, and thinking about the scope of his duties is enough to make one's head spin. With an overall budget of $170.4 million, he's not only in charge of marketing to consumers, but raising sponsorship revenue - a goal that was originally set at $454 million, which has been adjusted several times, with about $760 million raised to date.

Cobb says that when you consider the average professional sports team has to raise $15 to 20 million a year, the Olympic goal seems massive. That combined with the fact that they have few traditional media assets to sell - there's no advertising inside Olympic venues, so no arena signage, rink boards, etc., and television ads are sold through Olympic broadcaster CTV - forced Cobb to take a different approach.

"You have to convince people that you're going to provide value for what you're asking in return," he says, "[I took] a fresh look at how marketing and sales had typically been done and modified it a little to try and take it beyond just meeting the marketing objectives of companies, and expand it to any business objective they may have."

This meant researching potential sponsors and determining what objectives the Olympics could help them achieve - everything from rewarding employees to building brand recognition. "We would meet with companies four, five, six times before we even got close to talking about money," says Cobb.

He gives the example of sponsor Teck Cominco, the Vancouver-based mining company providing the gold, silver and bronze for the Olympic medals, which were unveiled last month. "They're not going to sell more gold or any other metal because of the Olympic Games," he says. "[It's about] value alignment - they want their people to associate with the values of excellence and discipline and everything the athletes have to do to get the medal hung around their neck. Every Teck employee will be part of that experience."

The Olympics have nine worldwide sponsors, such as McDonald's, Visa, GE and Coca-Cola, which have global rights and which became automatic Vancouver 2010 sponsors when the Games came to Canada. There are also six national sponsors - Bell, Hudson's Bay Co., RBC, GM, Petro-Canada and Rona - as well as over 40 other supporters and suppliers spanning an array of industries, from Nortel to Nike.