China’s two largest websites are having a battle — nothing physical — over Olympic advertising sales rights.

In one corner, Sohu, the Internet content sponsor of the Beijing Games, claims that online ads from other sponsors with the Beijing Olympics logo can only appear on its website. As our illustration shows Charles Zhang for Sohu signed an agreement to that effect in Beijing, in November, 2005.

In the opposite corner Sina says it plans to boost its Olympic content — no law against that — and also its development and marketing to attract all kinds of advertisers. And, of course, most of these will be Olympic advertisers.

Sina and its partners have also contested Sohu’s claim of exclusivity. They say Sohu’s sponsorship only entitles it to create the official website for BOCOG and to use the Beijing Games logo of a running man in its marketing.

Olympic organizers have confirmed Sohu’s marketing rights as an Olympic sponsor, such as its eligibility to use the Olympic logo. It has also promised crackdowns on any company that tries to establish or imply an association with the Games without paying any royalties.

Sina has since toned down its ‘Olympic marketing’ publicity campaign.

Olympic marketing officials have yet to confirm that Sohu.com owns the exclusive rights to carry online ads from other Olympic sponsors.

Sina says it plans to deploy a 450-strong team to cover the Games in Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish and Arabic.

Sohu has dismissed Sina’s strategies. It uses the analogy of ‘a regular army to a small band of guerrillas’ when comparing itself to Sina in terms of Olympic news coverage. That is a pretty dangerous analogy to use. Guerrillas have hammered regular armies many times. Read up on Chinese history to see some star examples.

All of which is reminiscent of the Australian Olympics. Qantas was not an official sponsor. But no Australian can tell you what airline paid for that privelege. All the advertising from Qantas seemed to suggest that it was the official carrier. Without directly saying so to the 3.8 billion viewers who watched the games on television. And the advertisements were pretty much all Qantas.

The official sponsor was Ansett Airlines. Which has now gone out of business. Qantas is the official Olympic carrier for the Beijing Games. Not all of the action at an Olympic Games is of a sporting nature.
Source: China Daily

There is nothing like a list of statistics to help you get the Olympic Games into perspective. Here are some:

28 Olympic programs, 302 sub-categories.
302 gold medals.
10,500 athletes are expected to participate.
21,880 torchbearers will run 137,000 km over 130 days.
The National Stadium (now and for ever called the Bird’s Nest) covers an area of 258,000 sq. meters and has 91,000 seats.
The surface of the National Aquatics Center is covered by 1,437 pieces of transparent material.
The highest price for the opening ceremony tickets is RMB5,000, the lowest is RMB200.
Beijing expects 550,000 international visitors and 2.4 million domestic spectators.
Over 800 star-class hotels and 4,000 hostels will provide about 420,000 over-priced rooms.

If you have an established domicile in China you can try to get a ticket on the official Beijing Olympics website. Phase 1 has ended but in October 2007 there is a new chance.
Source: China Snippets

More than two million flowering plants specially bred for 2008 Beijing Olympics have been put on display as China marks a one-year countdown to the Games.

Forty-eight varieties of flowers featuring 132 colors, including maidenhair, marigold and petunias, are displayed in full blossom in three areas:

On 7,000 square meters at ‘Shengfangyuan’, a flower breeding center in southern Beijing’s Huaxiang County.
On 50,000 square meters outside the Olympic beach volleyball venue in the eastern Chaoyang district.
Along a three-kilometer road connecting the villages of Huangtugang and Baipenyao, in Huaxiang County.

Li Xinmin, head of the Huaxiang committee of the Communist Party of China, said about 60 million flowers were needed to decorate parts of the city during next year’s Olympic Games. Chrysanthemums, a symbol of dignity in Chinese culture, and Chinese roses, peony and calla are on a list of Olympic flowers.

Zhao Ying, head of the flower breeding research team, said, ‘The blossoms are durable. Olympic flowers can resist heat, strong sunlight and drought.’

Landscape engineers would introduce more flower types from other parts of the country through crossbreeding to produce flowers that could blossom in the heat of August.
Source: China Daily

When Coca-Cola executives met with the Beijing Olympic Committee in 2002 for a status report on the first anniversary of the city’s winning bid, China was Coke’s sixth largest market. Today, a year away from opening ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, China has moved to No. 4 — and is still growing.

(It is no part of this editorial to discuss the health effects of Coke consumption and whether such a product should be associated with an important sporting event of world stature.)

Per capita consumption in China has grown as follows.

2002: 10; 2003: 12; 2004: 15; 2005: 18; 2006: 20

Coke’s sponsorship of the Games is a key component of the company’s global sports marketing program. Coke wishes to push its 200 brands deeper into consumers’ consciousness.

Paul Etchells, deputy group president for Coca-Cola Pacific, said, ‘This will be the biggest Olympics ever as well, I think, in terms of almost any measure. The number of athletes, the number of spectators, the number of media people who are forecast to come to China during the games.

We talk about the legacies in relation to the Olympics. In other words, what is it about our Olympics activation that’s going to survive the Olympics and is going to make a difference beyond August 2008. And the principal legacy has got to be the consumer view of our brands.

‘There are a very large number of outlets and it’s a three-week window during which these outlets are open and you have to ensure that you are up and running by the opening of the Olympics and that the execution during the Olympics is flawless. You realize there is a very large behind-the-scenes element in terms of the logistics . . . You visage immediately selling products to consumers, to spectators, but you have to provide products to the whole Olympic family — all the athletes, all the team managers, etc. So, a very large number of people, quite a complex logistics exercise.’

The mind boggles.
Source: AJC

Quite right, too. The Beijing 2008 Olympic site is quite excellent. More than 90% of all web users surfing into the new Internet home of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad approve of its new look, design and user-friendly interface.

Of the more than 9,800 visitors who participated in the on-line survey, 4,107 of the respondents said they were ‘extremely satisfied’ and another 4,654 said they were ‘relatively satisfied’ with the new site.

The revised news column integrated the original website, providing faster access to Olympic information and a more comprehensive coverage of the current preparation work in the Olympic City.

The revised website for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games significantly improves on the previous design and content of the website. There is little doubt it is cleaner and easier to use with faster delivery of information and content. And more than half the users think it is more eye-catching although this is a little more difficult to define.

What do visitors want? In order of importantce:

Timely and accurate game-time news.
Authoritative announcements of official information.
Immediate scores of Olympic competitions.
Live broadcasts of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympic (BOCOG) press conferences. (Plainly those who responded thus have limited experience of press conferences.)

Local newspapers, such as China Daily, China Sports, Beijing Evening News and Beijing Times, have given high marks to the new website. It deserves the praise.
Source: Olympic Website