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BEIJING — Get ready for the 2010 duct tape police.
Already, they are being groomed and honed to swoop down on logos, brands and anything else that offends the Olympic goal of commercial-free playing fields, or perhaps even worse, offends official Olympic corporate sponsors.
And nothing, from the big bold letters of GM Place to an Apple on a reporter's laptop, is off limits.
Such is the message that VANOC advertising enforcers hope to get out before the 2010 Winter Olympics begin, so they can leave the duct tape in their pockets.
The team leader is VANOC's director of commercial rights management, Bill Cooper.
He has been in Beijing since the beginning of the month for a hands-on experience in what might be the wildest, non-regulated commercial environment for an Olympic Games.
China, the pirating and counterfeiting capital of the world, is a place where rules are mostly for the other guy.
In a pedestrian underpass by Tiananmen Square, for instance, peddlers are doing a landslide business hawking non-sanctioned Olympic flags for a paltry 16 cents. Cheap Olympic T-shirts are everywhere, and rare is the shop that isn't trying some tie-in to the Games.
In an interview this week, just after combing the indoor cycling venue, Mr. Cooper said he relishes it all, as a challenge.
"There's certainly more of a wild west atmosphere here than there will ever be in Vancouver," he said. "I haven't walked through a mall yet where I haven't seen multiple store windows that are doing things that would hit a sponsor's radar and raise concern."
The offending sin is usually an attempt by retailers to leverage the Olympics into a better business opportunity without paying for it, a practice known as ambush marketing and the bane of the ultraprotective Olympic community. Unauthorized use of the Olympic rings is of course a no-no, and even a store linking itself to the Olympics by name alone is frowned upon.
In Beijing, eyebrows have already been raised about the selection of celebrated former Chinese gymnast Li Ning to light the Olympic torch. Mr. Li owns a well-known clothing line that bears his name, and some Chinese competitors have been wearing Li Ning apparel. Some call his selection for the opening ceremonies a subtle form of ambush marketing.
Observers believe the astonishing profile Mr. Li earned with his torch lighting will result in a bonanza of profits for his clothing line. The boost was already showing earlier this week, when the company's Hong Kong-listed shares jumped 3.4 per cent.
All things considered, however, Mr. Cooper gives Beijing organizers pretty high marks for doing a good job "minimizing and managing" violations under very difficult circumstances.
He is not just here to observe. Mr. Cooper is also part of the International Olympic Committee's enforcement team. Their job is to inspect every venue with a fine-tooth comb and ensure that it is uncontaminated by unauthorized commercial messaging.
IOC teams of two conduct these clean sweeps, looking for any hint of an inappropriate trademark too near the field of play or a corporate name where it shouldn't be if it is not an official Olympic sponsor.
"We look under the pillows and look under the sofas," Mr. Cooper said.
At one venue, they found an entire surveillance security system with its company name all over the place. The name was not official sponsor Panasonic.
A minor infraction perhaps, but out came the tape. "We masked the name of the other company as best we could. In these cases you try to be reasonable, but you often have to use tape. It happens quite a bit."
Mr. Cooper laughed at how his new job has changed him.
"When I walk through a venue now it's such a different thing. If I'm with my wife, she comments on the architecture, and I comment on the brand of the security system."
Mr. Cooper said that creating an ambush-free zone will be a challenge at some venues in Vancouver, notably the Pacific Coliseum, GM Place and B.C. Place, which are home to junior hockey's Vancouver Giants, NHL's Vancouver Canucks and CFL's B.C. Lions, respectively. For the moment, VANOC is using the phrase "Canada Hockey Place" to describe GM Place, until a final Olympic title is confirmed.
"You have a lot of pre-existing advertising at these places that will have to be covered up for the Olympics. BOCOG [Beijing's organizing committee] doesn't have that problem," he said.
As for those Apple computers or other prominent brand-name possessions used by on-site Olympic reporters, it's a real concern, Mr. Cooper said. The official venues are Lenovo territory.
"The TV cameras might pan to a prominent reporter during an event or a press conference. So if that might put a big, backlit Apple logo in the shot, and the event is sponsored by Lenovo, you want to try to prevent that."
That doesn't mean those guilty of brand violations will be sent to the woodshed for a licking, but their conflicting brands will be either masked, taken out of the line of sight "or remain at the back or in a storage facility," Mr. Cooper said.
Often it's a fine line that has to be drawn. If organizers clamp down too much, there is a chance of dampening the Olympic spirit.
No one wants to stop teachers from having their students do Olympic projects, using the five rings and other trademark logos, or stop stores from putting up big Olympic banners.
"But if you start to layer in other elements, there's a threshold at which it becomes damaging in the sponsorship category," Mr. Cooper said.
"You should not be able to leverage the good will of the Games to your benefit without paying for it, and that's really what we're protecting against."
By the time he leaves Beijing in another week, Mr. Cooper will be taking back to Vancouver an inside look at what the IOC expects in these matters and how they intend to police it.
He is actually an old Beijing hand. He spent time here in the early 1990s and learned the language.
So in the evening, he's been bicycling all over the city, trying to peek into as many nooks and crannies as he can.
"I've been seeing the look and the graphics of the Games around Beijing, and the scope and scale of what they've managed to do here is enormous," Mr. Cooper said.
"I don't think any Games in history has had so much application and presence around a big urban centre. It's everywhere, so this is just a terrific place to observe."
