T&T Olympic pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis has cau­tioned na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions that bul­ly­ing cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go and the tra­di­tion­al de­pen­den­cy on gov­ern­ment fund­ing are not ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing strate­gies to de­vel­op sus­tain­able rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

Speak­ing at the Sports Mar­ket­ing and High Per­for­mance Work­shop, host­ed by the TTOC in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the US Olympic Com­mit­tee (USOC), on Sat­ur­day, Lewis called for all in Trinidad and To­ba­go sport to step up and place strate­gic mar­ket­ing and com­mer­cial rev­enue gen­er­a­tion at the fore­front of their day to day ac­tiv­i­ties. "Sport must con­tribute to the sac­ri­fice that all of Trinidad and To­ba­go will be re­quired to make. The de­pen­den­cy on the State can't be the de­fault po­si­tion. NSOs have to de­vel­op their mar­ket­ing and brand build­ing ca­pac­i­ty as the main dri­ver of rev­enue gen­er­a­tion," said the no non­sense pres­i­dent.

Lewis de­scribed the work­shop as time­ly, giv­en the re­al­i­ty of the hard eco­nom­ic times fac­ing the coun­try.

Apart from Lewis, there were pre­sen­ta­tions from Michael O'Conor, Unit­ed States Olympic Com­mit­tee (USOC) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor - busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and Michelle Brown, di­rec­tor, per­for­mance op­er­a­tions & strate­gic plan­ning.

Brown has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­vel­op­ing the an­nu­al and qua­dren­ni­al plans for the USOC sports per­for­mance de­part­ment while O'Conor is re­spon­si­ble for mar­ket­ing rev­enue.

Lewis, Brown and O'Conor all hold Eu­ro­pean Uni­ver­si­ty con­fered Ex­ec­u­tive Mas­ters De­gree in Sport Or­gan­i­sa­tion Man­age­ment (MEM­OS ) through the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee.

The 29 par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed Je­hue Gor­don, 2013 400m hur­dles world cham­pi­on and Paul Voisin, (Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tors of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NAAATT) vice pres­i­dent.

Both the TTOC and USOC strate­gic mar­ket­ing plans were used as dis­cus­sion points dur­ing the mar­ket­ing fo­cused morn­ing ses­sion.

Dur­ing the af­ter noon pe­ri­od Brown pre­sent­ed on re­source al­lo­ca­tion strat­e­gy with a fo­cus on de­ci­sion mak­ing.

At the end of the work­shop par­tic­i­pants ex­pressed pos­i­tive views about the con­tent , de­liv­ery and for­mat of the work­shop.

"Great. Very in­for­ma­tive. Lots to think about. I learned some im­por­tant prac­ti­cal stuff about mar­ket­ing," said Gor­don.

Both USOC pre­sen­ters agreed it was a day well spent.

"The groups were in­ter­ac­tive and en­thu­si­as­tic to learn about mar­ket­ing best prac­tice," said O' Conor.

Brown point­ed to the fact that the di­ver­si­ty of ex­pe­ri­ences and sports al­lowed for an in­sight­ful and thought pro­vok­ing ses­sion on re­source al­lo­ca­tion.

"It's our first time to the Caribbean. Shar­ing the USOC ideas and ap­proach­es and hav­ing the groups adapt them to the lo­cal (T&T) en­vi­ron­ment and give pre­sen­ta­tions on their group work cre­at­ed mean­ing­ful in­ter­ac­tions and knowl­edge shar­ing ."

In her clos­ing re­marks TTOC sec­re­tary gen­er­al An­nette Knott thanked the par­tic­i­pants for tak­ing the time to at­tend the work­shop. "As vol­un­teers your time is a pre­mi­um and you have any num­ber of ex­cus­es not to at­tend. But you saw the im­por­tance and came."

She al­so not­ed the long stand­ing sup­port and guid­ance the TTOC re­ceives from the USOC.

"We ap­pre­ci­ate and trea­sure our close re­la­tions with the USOC. Even though they op­er­ate in a huge mar­ket and get not an io­ta of gov­ern­ment fund­ing. Their best prac­tice prin­ci­ples are adapt­able to our T&T en­vi­ron­ment."