Olympic Memories - Keep the Games Alive
by Michelle Morra
After Ottawa-born figure skater Barbara Ann Scott won the Olympic gold in Saint Moritz, Switzerland in 1948, she was immortalized when Reliable Toy Company of Toronto created a doll in her image. Available in different skater outfits, complete with miniature skates, the doll with the honey-blond hair was apparently the Tickle Me Elmo of Christmas gifts that year for little girls all over Canada. Today, an online forum on the Museum of Civilization website is filled with memories from 60-something Canadian women, sharing their memories of Canada’s most famous doll.
“I loved that doll,” says a 68-year-old in Portland, “and could not believe my eyes when I opened her on Christmas morning! My mother could not afford her and I do not know how she managed to buy her.”
Besides making “Canada’s sweetheart” even more famous, the Barbara Ann Scott doll would forever associate the toymaker with Canadian pride during a historical, international event. The doll bears no Olympic logo, but markings on her head read: “Reliable/Made in Canada.”
Fast-forward to a world less innocent but every bit as excited about the Olympics, in more ways than one. After the Beijing Games, a buyer and seller of Olympic memorabilia scoured the grounds in search of any unopened condoms leftover from the 100,000 supplied by the China Reproductive Health Industry Association. The man, Zhao Xiaokai, managed to scoop up 5,000 condoms and in November 2009 put the entire batch up for auction. The condoms bear the motto, “Faster, higher, stronger.”
Olympic-themed products over the years, whether pins, coins, backpacks or leather jackets, have shared one thing in common: people want them. People wear them, cherish them, use them, encase them in glass, buy and sell them.
And that has companies clamouring to make their mark. Many have celebrated the Olympics with signature products, some for very little profit, like Best of Seven, a Saskatchewan-based manufacturer of solid oak table hockey games that eventually released a limited edition of Canada/U.S. Olympic-themed units.
But today, only companies with official sponsorship status can legally use the Olympic logo or any of its associated words. To prevent “ambush marketing” (i.e., free publicity at the expense of official sponsors), host countries have started to adopt legislation to address this. In Canada it’s called Bill C-47, The Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act and it has stirred up some strong reactions. Anyone but an official sponsor is prohibited from marketing that uses terms like “Games” or “2010” or “Gold.”
In 2006, during the Torino Games, without being an Olympic sponsor, Imperial Oil ran a contest offering plane and hockey tickets to Italy to “Cheer on Canada.” The company eventually had to withdraw the campaign.
The Games caught some media flack when Olympia Pizza, a small business in Vancouver that had been around for years, received a letter from the International Olympic Committee demanding they change the restaurant’s name and logo. The restaurant owners refused, but that was before the law was passed.
In Athens, there were reports that people wearing T-shirts with non-sponsor logos at the Olympics were asked to remove them or turn them inside out. And in a more extreme scenario, although not at the Olympics, at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, fans received free lederhosen with the word “Bavaria” from Bavaria Brewery — which was in no way a sponsor (Budweiser was). Officials fought the marketing ambush by forcing 1,000 fans to remove the orange shorts and watch the rest of the match in their underwear.
For those companies that invest millions to sponsor the Olympics, governments understandably have had to somehow address the marketing free-for-all. A CTV report says that for global sponsors, the cost to associate with the Olympics has surged 50 per cent in the past decade.
Birks designed a miniature version of the torch used at the Beijing Olympics that sold very well. As an official sponsor of Vancouver 2010, the company has again produced the torches, as well as a series of charms and reasonably-priced silver gifts. Dan Kratochvil, Birks’ divisional vice-president for product development and Olympic project manager says the products were selling well at store level even in the fall of 2009.
“As we get closer [to the 2010 Winter Games], the hype will increase,” he says. Kratochvil says Olympic-themed products attract a variety of clientele.
“You’ve got people very much involved with the various Olympics that just follow from one Olympics to another,” he says. “But there are also Canadians who just have great pride that the Olympics are back in Canada.”
Unlike the “what” and “whom” of other promotional products, those with an Olympic connection are about the “when.” For the host city and its local sponsors, the promotion is tied to the specific Games. The world would never forget Calgary’s city symbol — the white cowboy hat — after each Canadian athlete wore one in the opening ceremony of the 1988 Winter Games. The manufacturer, Smithbilt Hats, is still riding the wave. No one currently working at the company was there in the ’80s, but Brian Hanson, the now vice-president says customers cherish their Olympic hats more than 20 years later.
“I still have people bring those hats in that they got at the Olympics, to get them fixed up,” he says.
As official outfitter of the Canadian team during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Roots designed apparel for our athletes to wear at the Games’ opening. Replicas were available in stores. In particular, Roots sold more than 500,000 of its red “Canada poor-boy” hats. Stores sold out as soon as shipments arrived, the company reports, and celebrities were spotted wearing the hats, including Robin Williams at the Academy Awards. The United States, impressed with the Canada poor-boy, invited Roots to outfit the American Olympic team for its Salt Lake City 2002 Games. Roots sold over a million “Team USA” berets.
“We sold everything head to toe,” says Robert Sarner, director of communication and public affairs for Roots Canada, “but for some reason, in both of those years, probably the most celebrated were those respective headwear.”
Asked why the Roots hats were so popular, he says, “It could be a desire to emulate the athletes. It could be patriotic fervour. And it could be that it appealed to a sense of style. I think Roots was the first company to really inject a certain element of style and popularize it in a way people really wanted to wear it.”
In the promotional industry, the Olympics always freshen things up. Hopes of catching some of the frenzy propel companies to carve out their place in history, and that takes creativity.
Coca-Cola Company has been an Olympic sponsor for decades. Coke has provided memorable take-away products far beyond the complimentary cola served at the Games. At the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, everyone in the stadium received an Olympic Games personal record keeper, with a wheel-shaped indicator they could dial to compare athletes’ performances to previous records. And in 1960, everyone at the Rome Olympic Games received an original, 45-rpm record of “Arrivederci Roma,” a favourite song of the day.
On goes the trend. Just as today’s athletes strive to surpass their predecessors, Olympic marketers push onward to be the fastest, highest and strongest.
