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The IOC's 'Clean Venue' Policy
Dave21212 writes "Yes folks, the International Olympic Committee's 'Brand Protection Team' will be protecting against the threat of Advertising Terrorism at the games. According to an MSNBC article, the IOC's Karen Webb states 'Our role is to protect all of our sponsor categories and actively monitor ambush activity.' Restricted items include, flags, umbrellas, shirts, hats, and bags with trademarks of rival sponsors. Unofficial brands can be confiscated and with only Coke allowed on Olympic grounds, this brings new meaning to The Pepsi Challenge!"
Is it me or are the Olympics taking on the tone of a totalitarian regime? If the restrictions on the athletes (no blogs, no 'unapproved' products, etc.) were being imposed by a government, there'd be an outcry. Because a non-governmental entity is doing it, it's ok?
I hope this doesn't infringe my rights online somehow.
"These tactics cut to the heart of the commercial viability of the Games, and represents one of their single biggest threats. Without guaranteeing exclusivity, it is harder to play competitive sponsors off against each other."
While worrying about "brand impurity" cutting to the "heart" of "commercial viability," they seem to have forgotten about the soul of the games.
Which is understandable, since to the promoters and "marketing protection squads," the games ceased long ago to be anything other than a way to make lots of profits.
When it becomes so bad that the majority of participants and spectators don't want to play a role in these little marketing games, it'll be too late. And that day is getting closer.
everything in moderation
From the article:
Nike's ambush of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics is still seen as the ambush of all ambushes. Saving the US$ 50 million that an official sponsorship would have cost, Nike plastered the city in billboards, handed out swoosh banners to wave at the competitions and erected an enormous Nike center overlooking the stadium. The tactics devastated the International Olympic Committee's credibility and spooked other organizations such as FIFA into adopting more assertive anti-ambushing strategies.
The article goes on to mention how Nike has never sponsored an entire event, and admits to "coming from a different angle" by sponsoring teams, press conferences even individual players. It's too bad that it has nothing specific to say about the Pepsi/Coca-Cola relationship.
Don't blame corporations for doing what they're programmed in their very DNA to do: turn a profit. Blame the Olympics for whoring themselves out for the corporate dollars. If you recall, the IOC had two members who took over $1 million to bring the 2002 games to Salt Lake City. Would it be a surprise if that's just the tip of the iceberg, and that there's major bribery of IOC members taking place on a continual basis? Corporations may be the johns, but it's the Olympics who's the streetwalker.
Did they do the same to members of that audience? If not, this is worse.
From TFA: We have to protect official sponsors who have paid millions to make the Olympics happen.
Silly me. I thought it was the that made the Olympics happen.
But that's only true if you think the competition is more important than the fancy pre-shows and fireworks. I guess now it's reversed -- the competitions are ancillary, the sponsors and ads are the main event now.
Which is why I don't watch it. My wife does. But she's not as jaded as I am (yet.)
everything in moderation
Of course the problem comes in the fact that many of the athletes rely on personal sponsors to compete at all; and if you're sponsored by Adidas but have to wear a Nike shirt or no shirt at all, well, you go without the Adidas money you need to train and compete because there's nothing in the deal for Adidas.
The organizers end up with all the loot, the competitors themselves are left out in the cold.
This a big deal in NASCAR right now, what with Coke sponsoring events and cars sponsored by Pepsi winning races and vice versa.
It's a fucking mess.
KFG
This is just like an amusement park that can control what they're going to let through their gates, even while charging $25 a person going through. The IOC is renting every olympic venue, so they get to set the rules as to what goes on there. If you don't like the rules, don't buy a ticket and don't go in the venues...
What it boils down to is the fact that the Olympics have lost their glow as a world gathering and now are just plain one big international TV game show production...
Without sponsors, the Olympic games simply wouldn't have enough funding to go on.
Are you serious?
If this isn't a troll, then you've lost touch a bit. The Olympics are supposed to be about international athletic competetion. Not million-dollar stage shows with fireworks and robotic Greek gods flying around. None of that adds to the real spectacle, IMHO, and none of the games requires expensive equipment or locales.
The article said Coke spent $60M, VISA another $30M, something like $120M from just the major sponsors.
You could have a perfectly excellent Olympics for a tenth or less of that. An acceptable Olympics (to most) for under a million.
The athletes want to compete, not be whores for some commercial concern (at least until after they win.)
everything in moderation
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Actually I'll turn it around by saying that it's not the companies spending a lot of money that are needed to make Olympic games happen, but that what you consider a 'modern Olympic games' is a result of the companies spending all that money.
Now, if you think Olympic games are about the fireworks and a city getting cash to build a large infrastructure around the games that they can enjoy long after, you should love it the way it is. If you think the Olympic games are about athletic achievements, you must realize that you can run and jump very well without having to create such a show and without having to build all that brand new infrastructure.
Personally, I think that although it's very nice if the cities organizing such an event can reap such benefits, I still think that for a lack of creativity, the Olympic committee has sold its soul for money.
There have to be ways to finance the event without having to be anal about which brand of soda people walk around with, and without having to forbid athletes to blog, and without selling all exclusive media rights to a single company per country, etc. Just think how much more fun and informative the event would be for everybody if there would be blogs firectly from the athletes right after they win/lose a competition, and if more of the media except just NBC joined in the coverage.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Silly me. I thought it was the [athelets] that made the Olympics happen.
No, the atheletes are only there to draw in a large crowd of consumers on behalf of the advertisers.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Cause it's the official operating policy of the Olympic games
When Seattle was looking into the Olympics it became know that many business would be "forced" to give up their name due to the use of Olympic. We've got a fucking Olympic Mountain Range these are named after. But no less, they would be forced to change, by local and state gov't edict.
We never got far enough along to determine if the mountain range would have to be renamed, perhaps they would just blot it out when doing panarama's of Seattle, sounds like it would be considered a terrorist mountainrange.
I supect a few well placed bribes could have mitigated the situation, perhaps a few IOC kids could get free rides to the UW.
perhaps it's time for the olympics to die again for a thousand or so years.
None of that adds to the real spectacle, IMHO, and none of the games requires expensive equipment or locales.
The article said Coke spent $60M, VISA another $30M, something like $120M from just the major sponsors.
You could have a perfectly excellent Olympics for a tenth or less of that. An acceptable Olympics (to most) for under a million.
Are you kidding?
Contrary to your statement, many Olympic events do require expensive locales. See, there are rules here, and rules are what make sports what they are - without them, a sport is just a couple of guys hitting a ball back and forth. You can't just swim in any swimming pool, you can't play soccer in a baseball stadium, you can't have a rowing competition in the middle of the ocean. These things all have to be regulation size and with regulated conditions, not to mention enough seats to ensure that people who want to can actually watch.
You couldn't build an Olympic-regulation swimming pool for less than $1 million. Even if you only held the Olympics in cities that had held them before (which sort of defeats the purpose of having them), the cost of refurbishing and modernizing old Olympic facilities alone would easily top $1 million. And that's just the first thing you'd have to do.
Hell, it cost more than $1 million just to put a track around the football field at my old high school. And that was in the 1980's!
Billions are being spent this time on security. And don't tell me it's not needed or that it's all paranoia, because you know, it's not like terrorism at the Olympics has never happened before, right? If you can't protect the athletes, then it's not even worth having an Olympics. It's just sports - it's not worth risking your life over. So this is a required expense if you ask me, and it's not really the reason for the high cost of the games anyway - Sydney 2000 cost $5.9 billion.
So your cost analysis is a little off. The Olympics could be done for less than the Athens games depending on the city, sure, but not much less in this day and age. The logistics, the facilities required, the security, hell the simple cost of salaried staff would be in the multiple millions of dollars at least. I don't see how you could do an Olympics in this day and age for less than several billion dollars.
Anyway, I don't have any problem at all with Olympic officials forcing athletes to hide corporate logos. How many sports have we seen where athletes have basically turned into walking advertisements? In some sports they seem to be actively hawking their sponsors during games (cough NBA basketball cough). And I have seen some seriously questionable "viral" marketing at these games... for example, just yesterday at the diving competition, the American divers were repeatedly shown listening to music during rest periods, with the NBC analysts commenting on their playlists. So today, I hit the NBC Olympics web site, and sure enough, there's a link asking "What music does Laura Wilkinson train to?" on the right side of the page, which goes to a page of huge Real Rhapsody ads. That kind of sneaky stuff really pisses me off.
An even better example of where our culture is going is the fact that you think it's perfectly reasonable to pay money to wear clothing which has the very dominant feature of being an advertising device for the company making that clothing. So you've chosen to be a voluntary addidas billboard rather than a nike billboard, and you're upset that consumerism dominates our society to the extent that events, like clothes, are mere advertising opportunities, and as such are controlled by the advertisers?
XML causes global warming.
Then would you care to explain what made the Olympics possible since Ancient Greek times? They didn't have advertising hit-squads back then did they?
The Olympics have not been going since Ancient Greek times.
There were the ancient Olympics, which stopped several thousand years ago.
Now we have the modern Olympics, started just over 100 years ago. Two different competitions with different organisations and different sets of ideals.
America isn't a christian nation. There are indeed religious nutbags who desperately wish it were a christian nation, but so we've managed to keep those nutbags from seizing the government.
If it ever becomes a christian nation, I'll be one of the first to pick up a rifle and join the rebellion against the theocracy.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Finally, a realistic response! Whose event is it? The IOC's! Who gets to decide which advertising contract to sign? They do!
Did they -have- to offer the current Gestapo-esque logo placement to Coke? No! They could have said "Piss off, its a free country and the athletes can have Pepsi on the field if they want."
That they did not do that should tell you a great deal about the IOC and the people who run it. In fact they probably suggested it to Coke, not the other way around.
Coke is an American company. Does Coke really want to be associated with police state tactics, particularly at the Olympics? I think not.
As far as the IOC is concerned the athletes have no rights. They exist for the sole purpose of enriching the IOC and its contituent gratuity seeking, slime mold apparatchiks. These people don't walk, they glide on an extruded layer of mucous.
What political system is that kind of thing most closely identified with? Give you a hint, it starts with an "S", ends with "ocialism".
I bet the North Korean and Chinese teams feel right at home.
And there's plenty more to come. It's only a matter of time.
But he hasn't turned the U.S. into a theocracy...yet.
That may be why I'm voting for that douchebag Kerry. Not because I think he's any better than Bush (I don't), but because the democrats and republicans are so much like immature frat boys that I think the government will deadlock for four years with him in charge.
That's what I'm hoping for anyway. An ineffectual, deadlocked government. I think it's the best I can get under the current system.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The idea that the host city gets a lot of cash and a sporting infrastructure is a common misconception. In a few weeks, it will be announced exactly how much the Greek people will lose by hosting the Games. I'm guessing they will lose the most money in history of the Olympics, even exceeding the blow Montreal took in '76.
It is not entirely their fault. Security costs exceed 1.2 billion US -- an enormous cost for a country of only 11 million to shoulder.
Salt Lake made a little cash -- but did not build anything that wasn't already planned. Atlanta built nothing that wasn't prepaid, the games were spread from DC to Florida to use existing facilities. Things like Centennial Park were funded privately, not by IOC activity.
I agree that the IOC has sold itself for money. Some of it has got to be backfiring. For instance, by only accepting Visa (R) credit cards as payment for tickets, they are excluding potential spectators and merchandise buyers who hold cards bearing other brands. If I were running these Games, I would accept any instrument of payment the paying fan had on them, in order to move merchandise and tickets that will be valueless in two weeks. I am guessing that the Athens organisers have lost more than the US$40m the IOC gained from the sponsorship fee.
What if I wanted to wave a flag with a big yellow smiley face on it? I bet you it would be allowed. Why the hell then restrict the Taiwanese flag?
Last I knew the flag didn't have to be a national flag.
However, it's a bigger problem that monoliths can actually look at dropping millions for product placement as a good investment.
Stories like this make me feel like I'm living in a fucking loony box, and the inmates have taken over - who the fuck really eats at MCD's because of this "I'm lovin it" shit? Who the hell really felt a little tingle up their spine when they saw the "our best is serving the world's best" ads? If you raised your hand, please, shoot yourself.
The most amazing thing about advertising is that it actually works. I didn't buy an ipod because 50 Cent had one in one of his shitty videos. I bought an ipod because of the word of mouth endorsements from *gasp* private individuals.
Likewise, I'd like to know how many people are really going to buy Nike, now that they are the "official" sponsors. It's not like the horde of 10 year olds that wanted Air Jordans because MJ had em. I, for one, couldn't give a flying fuck what Michelle Kwan wears. It's not that "consumers are confused" as to who the Olympic bribe...er..."sponsors" are, it's that they simply don't give a shit.
In the end, the joke is on the corporations - at least, on the apparel side of things. I couldn't care less about athletes, but I can at least name the more prominent ones. I know who Kobe Bryant is, I know who A-Rod is, I know who Michael Vick is. I would suggest that the average person, the type of mindless fuck who would buy something based on what he/she saw on TV, can't name 10 Olympians. I can name Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding for all the wrong reasons. I can name Michelle Kwan because she was the Asian eye candy of choice elevated by the powers-that-be. I can name Kurt Angle because of his WWE deal.
Now, here's an even bigger challenge for the average person - name 10 Olympians involved with THIS Olympiad. The average person can't. That kind of hurts MJ-style endorsement deals, based upon the will to emulate the athlete, when you don't even know who the fuck the athlete is!
Still, it's disgusting to know that even one person has changed their preference from Burger King to MCD's, based upon the Olympic marketing. It's sad that someone, somewhere, will go out of their way to buy Coke instead of Pepsi, because "that's what the Olympic people drink!"
It's all around us - the Nvidia/ATI scams. The Coke "real" commercials that imply you'll get teased by a hot beachcomber chick if you only drink their carbonated voodoo potions. The entirety of the fucking Superbowl. It's getting to a point where there is no more "product," only advertising. It's already gotten to a point where they are actually advertising for advertising! Don't buy it? Think of this - MTV's business model is based upon advertising both products and new "stars," who then advertise new "products" to make the majority of their livelyhood. MTV advertises Britney Spears, Britney advertises Pepsi, Pepsi advertises their tie-in deal-of-the-week; it's a never ending cycle of madness, and it's baffling how anyone ever makes any money!
It's recognised enough to be allowed to compete as a separate country.
Consistency is important. If you let Taiwan compete, it shoudl be able to use its flag. If you don't recognise it as a country, don't let it compete as one.
Kathy Freeman carried an Australian Aboriginal flag when she won the 400 m sprint at the Commonwealth Games in 1998. She was threatened with all sorts of things if she did it again, but she told all the powers that be to get stuffed. She impressed the said powers so much that she was chosen to light the cauldron at the Olympics.
And then she won the 400 in Sydney, and did it again. Most Australians regard her as a hero. Telling the powers that be to get stuffed is a great Australian tradition.
Cogito, ergo sig.