The idea of infringing on the Olympics trademark seems, to an outsider, to be the daftest way to make a slightly dodgy quid. For certain sure you will be arrested. (Those in our picture are genuine and quite snazzy. Good stuff.)

Six people who tried were arrested by Hong Kong Customs officers. In the raids at Wan Chai, Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok, Customs officers from the Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau seized from seven hawker stalls about 350 pieces of goods, including key rings, watches, caps, badges and stickers, worth about $897.

Most of the seized goods bore the Official Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Three men and three women, aged between 40 and 60, were arrested during the Customs’ operation.

After the operation, Customs officers sought help from Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the 29th Olympiad, the trademark owner, in trademark identification. Initial Customs investigation showed that the goods were of low quality and priced about half of the genuine goods sold at official channels.

Hong Kong Customs has stepped up surprise checks in the region, taking stringent enforcement against selling activities of counterfeit Beijing 2008 Olympic Games products. The Beijing 2008 Olympics’ equestrian events will be held in Hong Kong in 2008.
Source: China Daily

Shanghai based i-level Media Group has officially opened a branch office in Beijing. The company expects to capitalize on growing demand for advertising opportunities with the Olympic Games looming.

i-level Media Group provides the sometimes entertaining, sometimes irritating, always intrusive LCD screens in taxis.

‘With over 60,000 taxis currently in service in this city, and the 2008 Olympics coming very soon, Beijing is an ideal market for our media,’ noted i-level’s CEO, Aidan Sullivan. ‘We intend to establish a significant presence here in time to capture a portion of the massive ad spend that is expected around the period of the Olympics next year.’

i-level Media has already begun negotiations with Beijing taxi operators and is intent on launching its in-cab screens within months. Testing the screens with local taxi companies will begin this summer. Starting later this year, i-level hopes to install at least 1,000 units per month.

Source: i-level Media Group

Sporting events often get companies laying on the commercial tie-ins to take advantage of the ‘feel good’ factor. Plus, of course, the hoped-for massive viewing figures. Which are pretty amazing. More than a billion Chinese are expected to watch, plus half-million international visitors and a worldwide viewing audience of, say, four billion.

Tom Doctoroff, China chief executive officer of JWT, an international advertising company, described the activity surrounding the commercial tie-ins with the games as an ‘orgy’ and said, ‘every single company under the sun has, or is preparing, some kind of Olympic pitch.’

Beijing is spending $2.6 billion — this is only half of what Athens spent for the 2004 Games — to construct Olympic venues.

But it is spending $200 billion to give the capital a major pre-Games makeover and this includes permanent upgrades to the city’s transportation and communication infrastructures. Which, in fairness, could do with a bit of a lift.

The sponsorship program developed for Beijing 2008 is the large and comprehensive and ad campaigns from Olympic sponsors such as Visa, Coca-Cola and Lenovo hav already statrted.

The Beijing Olympics, in a sense, is the first major attempt for China to show the world that it is progressive and innovative and that it cares, perhaps not yet enough but the effort ir there, for the people and the environment.

On July 13, 2001, the very same evening Beijing was celebrating being awarded the 2008 Olympic Games, Coca-Cola’s Beijing plant ran off 30,000 bottles, each wrapped in a golden cover reading ‘Our Congratulations on the Olympics’. This is serious big time stuff.

According to a recent study, 68% of Chinese sports fans are more likely to buy brands that sponsor the Olympic Games than those that don’t.

Volkswagen’s director of Olympic marketing, Anthony Laver, estimates that in the 12 months before the Games begin, official sponsors will spend as much as $2 billion on advertising in China alone.

To truly succeed in the Chinese market, both local and multinational companies must find ways to engage the 100 million young affluent Chinese consumers who have the money for premium brands.

And that is where we diverge from the Asia Online article and look a little askance at the money being spent. The reason is one word: ‘football’.

Around the world surveys have shown that the under 30s are less and less interested in the Olympics and more and more interested in football. Or, if you will, online games. It is going to be very sad if the people who watch the games, who are enthusiastic about the games, who relate to the games are an older age group. If this turns out to be the case, this will be the last massively commercial Olympic Games of them all
Source: Daniel Allen in Asian Times Online