The Olympics is nearly here! Thank goodness for that, a happy and rousing occasion to drag us all out of the quagmire of recession, austerity and rain! We’re about to watch the world’s greatest sportsmen (drink Coke) and sportswomen (eat MacDonalds) compete for the (buy BP)… Hang on a minute, what’s going on here? What does this have to do with sport?
“But James, what you don’t understand is that they Olympics couldn’t have gone ahead without the extra money from the official partners.”
Really? Let’s look at the figures then – the sponsor’s money accounts for less than 2% of the total spend, so by my calculations that means that 98% of the cost of the Olympics was paid for (sponsored) by the Great British Tax Payer – Official Olympic partner.
So couldn’t we have just cut back 2% on the total costs and not had the sponsors?
“It doesn’t work like that James, we need to the sponsors to, erm…”
Highlight the problems with global obesity? Eat burgers, drink corn syrup, run faster!
Right then, and please stop me if I’m wrong – as us tax payers sponsor 98% of the Olympics, that means we get to use the Olympics as part of our advertising? Fantastic! To be honest this couldn’t come at a better time, everyone’s suffering at the moment and for us all to cash in on the influx of visitors to London will mean that…
“Ah, yes, about that, erm… It’s fine to advertise your business as long as you don’t use any of these words: Olympic (s), Olympiad (s), Olympian (s), Paralympic (s), Paralympiad (s), Paralympian (s), London, Games, Summer, Two thousand and twelve, 2012, Twenty Twelve, Medals, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Sponsors. We will of course be sending out Brand Police to help enforce this.”
So let’s get this right, as a London based UK registered Limited company with London in its company name, we are not allowed to use the word “London”* to promote our company during the Olympics?
“Yes”
Even though we, the tax payers, are the majority sponsors and partners of the Olympics?
“Yes”
Thank you for joining me today Lord Coe**.
*AMENDMENT:
It’s been pointed out to be that the Independent article linked above is wrong about the use of the word ‘London’ by itself, offical guidelines are as follows:
The banned expressions are:
– any two of the words: Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, Twenty-Twelve
OR
– any word in the list above with one or more of the words: London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver, bronze
**These are not the words or expressions of the real Lord Coe, I am using satire to illustrate a point.
As you can imagine, here at The LONDON School of English, we are rather concerned about getting a ‘knock on the door’ from the Brand Police, who will probably insist that we change our name, even though we have used it for the past 100 years. We also realise with horror that much of our printed material this year has ’2012′ printed on the front. Oh, and our accommodation categories are called GOLD and SILVER. We may even have promoted the occasional SUMMER special offer! Clearly we have shamelessly contravened the rules and I can only apologise to Lord Coe – and anyone else who would like an apology. I presume the media, writers of dictionaries and other businesses who have the misfortune of being based in LONDON during the SUMMER of 2012 will wish to do the same.
Hauke Tallon, Managing Director at A Language School In Our Capital City (I’m not sure that works very well).
Dear James and Hauke,
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Absolutely loved your posts! Very funny indeed! Or not funny at all? Confused…:-))))
Shame on you Hauke! How could you do this to your nation´s capital???
I am, without any hesitations, immediately changing the name of our portal to UKsCapitalStudyGuide.com!
Best of luck to you all guys!
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William
If I was sponsored to eat a McDonald’s, I’d give it a go. This day and age competing at a high level costs a lot of money. If it wasn’t for the sponsors, a lot of this wouldn’t happen.
Hi Ben,
I don’t think we were anti-sponsorship but more anti the fact that small London companies couldn’t benefit from using the Olympics to promote themselves and only the large multinational companies could. Competing at a high level does cost a lot of money and most of that money came from the tax payer not Macdonalds and Co but thanks for your comment