In just nine days, the Olympics hits London and attention has increasingly turned to the influence corporate sponsors have over the Games.
Unsurprisingly, this is largely due to G4S dominating coverage for failing to deliver 10,000 security staff in time for the Games, causing its mentions to soar well over 1,000% in a few days.
Yet, the protection of sponsors’ investment and the Olympic brand has already attracted plenty of notice and criticism (such as the notice below), as organising committee Locog has tackled any attempt by non-sponsors to align themselves with the Games.
Whether shop window displays or an East London café now called Café ‘Lympic, no one is too small to avoid Locog’s scrutiny.
However, what is unlikely to make the same kind of headlines is that, in reality we are only just entering the strictest period of all. Olympic Rule 40 comes into force today, with the sole aim of stopping “ambush marketing” by non-sponsors trying to get in on the Olympics action.
Rule 40
The rule stops Olympic athletes and other participants such as coaches from appearing in adverts and promotions by anyone other than the official 55 partners, immediately before and during the Games. It goes as far as preventing athletes from even mentioning their personal sponsors on social media.
The penalties for flouting Rule 40 are severe, with athletes facing fines or potential disqualification from the Games.
It’s understandable why one of Locog’s central responsibilities is protecting sponsors’ investment, given they provide around £1.4billion of the total £11billion cost of the Olympics.
However, policing the wild and woolly world of social media is an intriguing challenge to say the least and certainly not for the faint-hearted.
It will be interesting to see how sponsors use the Rule 40 blackout period to their advantage and whether it will truly stifle rivals’ ad campaigns. But how it translates to social is a different matter.
London 2012 v social media
Locog has already taken up the battle against non-sponsors on social, forcing the suspension of an activist group’s Twitter account for using the official logo and attempting to recruit Twitter itself to police the site for ambush tactics.
Yet, social media is unlike any other media platform. It offers opportunities to non-sponsors like never before to get around the Olympic rules without ever breaking them – something Locog may not be able to do anything about.
Just do it on social
Take, for instance, Nike – a company people are often surprised to learn is not and has never been an Olympics sponsor, because its association with the Games and athletes is so strong.
Nike has already picked up plenty of mentions in among the Olympics social chatter, largely through its #makeitcount campaign, featuring Olympic athletes such as Mo Farah and Paula Radcliffe.
And it is putting social media to further use with its newly announced real-time Olympics ads campaign on Twitter. Nifty manoeuvring, because it doesn’t flout the rules.
The social media Olympics
The freewheeling nature of social media is not one that takes kindly to being told what to do. Locog will have to tread very carefully in how it tackles infringements on social media in order not to alienate people.
Quite how far it will be able to police social media is the biggest question. If a non-sponsor is being linked to the Olympics freely by tweeters and bloggers, attempting to stop that could prove impossible. Indeed, doing so could merely start a tweetball* in retaliation.
If London 2012 is the first social media Games, it will also be the first that truly tests the organiser’s ability to control official affiliation across all channels and non-sponsors’ creativity to get around the rules.
Who will own social media during the Olympics? It seems the battle could only just be commencing.
* My newly coined term for a deluge of tweets. Copyrighted obviously.
