Sponsor Focus

An efficient car is not a million miles away from the characteristics of a top athlete

By David Owen

Automotive partnerships are intriguing beasts in the Olympic sponsorship menagerie: highly visible at Games-time through the thousands-strong fleet of cars that ferry many of the cogs in the Olympic machine around, they are nonetheless not part of the TOP worldwide sponsorship programme.

This has precluded any one carmaker from forging the sort of long-term bonds with the Olympic Movement established by the likes of Coca-Cola and Omega.

It is interesting in this context to consider what it was that made the German vehicle manufacturer BMW decide that London 2012 was the right event for it to step up to the plate in.

Blur have helped bring London 2012 live events into sharper focus

The sights and sounds of London 2012 are getting closer and closer. Soon – very soon – the BBC Big Screens already set up in 22 cities around the British Isles will fill with live Olympic and Paralympic action, and the squares and streets and parks around those screens will teem with activity and music.

In the last few weeks, some vivid details have begun to emerge as to how the Games will connect with the wider, non ticket-bearing public.

For BT London Live, ironically, it is Blur who have given one of their iconic projects a hard edge.

Winning in the generation game

By David Owen

Electricity, like ballet and ancient Greek, has always been a bit of a mystery to me.

I had fondly imagined that if you wanted to stage a sports event in an unconventional location you simply shipped in the infrastructure, attached a standard 13-amp plug (you know, the brown wire is live; the blue one is neutral – the stuff even I know) and trained an extension lead to the nearest electrical socket.

Apparently it is a bit more complicated than that.

A quarter-of-the-century of TOP demonstrates how Olympic Movement saved itself from disaster

By David Owen

It is a little after noon on July 28, 2010 and Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President, is in a London hotel just up the road from Big Ben with the mothers of some of the world's best-known Olympians. The occasion?

A news conference to announce the arrival of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the consumer products company behind brands like Gillette, Duracell and Iams, as a worldwide Olympic sponsor.

Exactly 12 days earlier in New York, the Dow Chemical Company, another blue-chip US corporation, had also signed on as a TOP partner. Taken together, the two deals demonstrated the continuing vigour of the Olympic Movement's flagship global marketing programme, even in exceptionally testing economic times.