PEPSI AND WEAPONS MUST BE LEFT AT GATE!
From RMNews:
If you have been following the RMNews Cola Wars, you are aware that we have been saying that Pepsi belongs to Faction 2 and Coke is Faction One. At this year's Australian Olympics, Coke out bid Pepsi and became the official sponsor.
(It would be interesting to see if any illegal back room deals were cut with the scandal ridden Olympic committe to give Coke the higher edge.)
Evidently Coke has ordered Pepsi banned from the Olympics. Look at the way that the following article has worded this "Pepsi Ban" It appears as if they are putting Pepsi in the same class as WEAPONS.
The next article is the THE REVENGE OF PEPSI. Pepse struck back at Coke in Spain. At the moment Spainish authorities, acting on a complaint by Pepsi, are investigating Coke's illegal competive procedures.
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From Reuters article Sept. 18 Sydney 2000 Olympics
"Coca-Cola is an official sponsor and security staff at Olympic venues are asking spectators carrying cans of Pepsi to leave them at the gate -- along with anything that could be construed as a weapon. It's that or no entry."
Hear that maties? Check you guns and Pepsi at the door!
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000918/23/sport-olympics
Olympics-Pepsi a banned substance at Olympic Games
Updated 11:42 PM ET September 18, 2000
By Paul Holmes
SYDNEY, Sept 18 (Reuters) - It's either the Pepsi or the pole vault.
You can't have both at the Olympic Games in Sydney.
Coca-Cola is an official sponsor and security staff at Olympic venues are asking spectators carrying cans of Pepsi to leave them at the gate -- along with anything that could be construed as a weapon. It's that or no entry.
"Non-Games sponsor products are not allowed -- that's why sponsors pay huge amounts of money," a spokesman for organising committee SOCOG said.
An elite band of corporate sponsors have paid close to $1 billion to the International Olympic Committee and to SOCOG to associate their brands and products with the greatest show on earth and will go to great lengths to guard that precious right.
So when a lower-tier Australian food supplier last week was spotted selling a bacon and egg roll known as a "damper," it was forced to remove it from the menu.
The offending roll was deemed a little too similar to the Egg McMuffin sold by McDonald's, one of the 11 worldwide Olympic sponsors which together have forked out a whopping $550 million to the IOC for global marketing rights for the period 1997-2000.
SOCOG has hauled in a further A$750 million ($410 million) from 13 Australian corporate sponsors for the Sydney Games and dozens of official supporters and providers supplying everything from beer and biscuits to metal detectors and sunscreen.
"The target (for sponsorship revenue) has been met on two occasions and raised a third time," said Sharon Hobson, a spokeswoman for SOCOG's marketing arm.
"There's no other opportunity like it in Australia."
BRAND RECOGNITION
For the sponsors, the spin-off of being part of the Olympics, with their sporting ideals of excellence and achievement, and the right to use the famous Olympic five rings and other symbols in their advertising is enormous.
Market research has shown those rings have 93 percent recognition, and that means a big boost to brand recognition for the companies that can associate them with their products and services.
"The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games are an unmatched marketing platform, unparalleled in the world," said a spokesman for computer giant IBM, one of the IOC's global sponsors and the supplier of information technology systems to SOCOG.
"That's why you do it."
He said IBM research conducted after the Nagano Winter Games in 1998 showed increases ranging from 11 percent to 40 percent in awareness of the company and the attributes it seeks to promote.
IBM has been a global sponsor since 1993, when the IOC introduced its so-called TOP programme of worldwide corporate backers. These will be its final Games.
"It was a business decision, pure and simple," the spokesman said. "We concluded that the investment simply could not be justified by the available business return."
Samsung Electronics, meanwhile, says it has forecast a threefold return on a $200 million investment in sponsorship fees, marketing and advertising linked to the Olympics.
It expects its brand recognition in the mobile telephony market to increase four to six percent as a result of the Games, said Jay Kim, a spokesman for the South Korean-based company.
Not that Samsung can do whatever it likes.
Samsung has sponsor status only in the wireless communications category, so the televisions it has supplied at Olympic press centres have black tape stuck over their logos.
"Panasonic are the worldwide sponsors for audio and video equipment...We don't want to go into their category," Kim said.
THE "O-WORD"
So fierce is the guardianship of Olympic marketing rights that SOCOG lobbied for a law known as the "Olympic Arrangements Act" that gives Australian authorities powers to levy stiff fines on non-sponsor companies that try to "ambush" the Games.
But there are still ways to capitalise on the Olympics without creating an association with the Games or using the "O-word."
The Australian airline Qantas, which has no official link to the Games, ran a huge advertising campaign in the build-up to the Olympics using some of Australia's best known sporting stars.
It also got massive exposure in the United States with a film showcasing Australia that U.S. broadcasting rights holder NBC used to open its Olympics television coverage last week.
Ansett Australia, the official Olympic airline for the Sydney Games, settled out of court with Qantas in two cases of alleged ambush marketing that Ansett's lawyers pursued.
An Ansett spokesman, Michael Rolnick, said the company was not too concerned by Qantas's success. He said Ansett was using its Olympic involvement to target the corporate account market and did not fly to the United States anyway.
"We're projecting a return of at least four to five times our investment," Rolnick said. "I don't think you'll find anyone in Ansett who is displeased with that." ^ REUTERS@
