CISM International Symposium 2008

Sofia / Bulgaria
24 – 25 September 2008

Sports activities - “How to emphasize the importance of sports within the Armed Forces at national and international level”

CISM opens their mind for new communication and marketing ideas.

To follow the development and the relations between sport, media and commercial needs worldwide and also the developments within the armed forces of our member countries towards greater professionalism and military specialization of soldiers for military obligations and at the same time with fewer personnel which now requires more administrative and scientific skills and its influence to the sports program of CISM in the future, CISM has decided to focus on the symposium issues, from training scientific matters to the sports marketing, communication and management field.

The broad divergence between the overall sport activities organized by our CISM members around the globe, the sport for peace and solidarity action as well the outstanding idea of “Military world Games” and the deficit of recognition by the public media and the more or less  ignorance of the commercial part of the sport society, are just a few arguments to spent time and effort to dedicate a CISM Symposium to the subject  how to identify the potentialities of the Armed Forces sporting activities as marketable products and how to create institutional, economical and sportive attractiveness on the CISM image on both its internal military level and on the international sporting markets.

Nevertheless, we have to make sure that our world class athletes and our well trained Soldiers, who are doing both their service in the armed forces, compete in CISM events as often as possible, and we have to make sure that CISM sport events are as attractive as possible.

Thanks to the armed forces of Bulgaria, who provides CISM splendent conditions for the symposium, we were able to have lively interaction between the participants and the experts coming from all corners of the globe to the benefit of CISM. We identified weak points within our organisation and we got useful elements to improve the “brand”. We have been able to identify also our strong points as the unique military sport organisation and we got a clear vision how to play this trump card.

The results are summarized in a symposium booklet and in several handbooks and guidelines to ensure the continuity of the ongoing process and to leave no stone unturned towards a modern and integrated CISM communication and marketing strategies.