Olympic organizers say they're seeing little ambush marketing by Canadian advertisers around the Turin Games -- a big change from 2004, when several major corporations were accused of piggybacking on the Olympic brand.
The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) for the 2010 Games has raised about $500-million selling ring rights to a handful of Canadian sponsors. And it carefully scrutinizes advertising by non-sponsors to make sure they don't try to link themselves to the Games.
"We've seen very few incidents of non-Olympic sponsors running Olympic-based ads, either on the television broadcasts or in newspapers or promotions -- certainly fewer than we saw at Athens," said Dave Cobb, senior vice-president of revenue, marketing and communications for VANOC.
"We're very pleased that companies are respecting the rights that we've sold to our Olympic sponsors."
During the 2004 Athens Games, the Canadian Olympic Committee complained that various advertisers -- including the Toronto Stock Exchange, Air Canada, LG Electronics Canada Inc. and Volkswagen Canada Inc. -- were infringing on Olympic rights they hadn't paid for. Several sponsors agreed to make changes to their advertisements on the CBC broadcast.
VANOC says it has no concerns about television ads that have run during the first few days of the 2006 Games. Mr. Cobb said any ads that refer to the Olympics are from official sponsors, such as Bell Canada and Royal Bank of Canada.
The CBC has done a much better job of working with advertisers to make sure that the Olympic rights are protected this time, Mr. Cobb said.
He said non-Olympic sponsors may have decided to stay away from the Olympics because of a high-profile spat last fall in which VANOC publicly embarrassed Imperial Oil Ltd. for running a contest it said infringed on the Olympic brand. Imperial Oil changed its promotion to address VANOC's concerns.
"It was unfortunate that it had to go to that step to make it public, but as a result of it, we got people's attention. And people are being a little bit more careful now to make sure they're respecting the parameters that we need to follow," Mr. Cobb said.
While VANOC has not had any problems with TV advertising, it is concerned about a small number of newspaper ads and promotions.
"There have been some that are at least on the edges . . . " Mr. Cobb said. "We deal with them privately to the extent we can. And we've had co-operation from those that we felt have crossed the line. They've agreed to withdraw the ads that we felt did push into the Olympic realm."
VANOC is reviewing a newspaper ad that ran on the weekend in The Globe and Mail and Le Journal de Montreal to see whether it infringed on the Olympic brand. In the ad for Sico paint, coloured paint chips are used to depict the Olympic rings. Sico is not an Olympic sponsor.
Dominique Pépin, brand manager for Longueuil, Que.-based Sico Inc., said the ad follows up on one that ran during the federal election in which paint chips were used in the various party colours. She said Sico's ad agency, Saint-Jacques Vallée Young & Rubicam, was careful to make sure the newest ad did not violate Olympic copyright. For example, they used the word "games" with a lower-case "g" in an effort to make it more general.
"They said they had done all the research because they knew how picky Olympic people were with the rights that they own," she said.
Ms. Pépin said Sico has contributed to Canadian athletes through hardware retailer Rona Inc. Rona, an official Olympic sponsor, is one of Sico's largest customers.
Some observers say Olympic organizers have been overly aggressive in policing their copyright. In late 2004, for example, VANOC went after the owner of Vancouver pizzeria Olympia Pizza, asking him to take down the sign he had used since 1993, which depicted the Olympic rings and torch.
Michael Budman, the co-founder of Roots Canada, has predicted that VANOC's "heavy-handed approach" will be met with "big-time resistance" closer to the Vancouver 2010 Games. Roots used to be an Olympic sponsor, but Hudson's Bay Co. assumed those rights last year.
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