Art-directing the Beijing Games

By Dirk Eschenbacher

No doubt the Games is the most exciting event for anyone who has lived in Beijing for any length of time (seven years in my case) Many things have changed in Beijing ahead of the Games. We’ve torn down an entire section of this city as big as my hometown to construct an all new central business district. The same for the Olympic Green, where tens of thousands of residents have been moved to places not mentioned. We have a new CCTV building and a new opera; we built an entire new subway system; an airport which couldn’t be any bigger; and we’ve made it rain on command. Change indeed.

But something that has been little commented on is the smaller, visual change that we’ve seen. What Olympic tourists take for granted is in fact something rather special for us Beijingers.

It starts with the city’s cab drivers who have undergone a complete make-over. While the old, trashy cabs have been banned from the streets over the past three years, it wasn’t until 1 August that the taxi drivers themselves had a visual upgrade. These guys used to live a cowboy life, dressing as they pleased and even shaving while driving; but they now all sport the same yellow and blue uniform with matching ties. When asked about it, they are all very happy with the uniforms and their 100%-cotton comfort. Only the ties are a bit of a drag, and are usually stowed inside the glove compartment.

The night of 1 August saw another amazing thing happen across the city. Suddenly every shop front, in every road and on every corner, featured standardised signage. Where before a wealth of more or less creative signs pointed out what to expect behind the doors, now a unified size and a standard set of colours and fonts make every street and every shop look the same. I can only imagine the amazing logistics behind such a feat. Even McDonald’s and KFC had to comply with this new regulation, though they could keep their logo on the board.

Walking though the Olympic streets of Beijing reveals another detail to the trained eye: flowers everywhere. This took a bit of trial and error, though, as flowers of all shapes and forms have been put up and down throughout the town for several months. It is a real treat - wherever you go you can play flower spotting. Written in tulips or roses you find anything from ‘Welcome to Beijing 2008’ to ‘Use civilized behaviour; create a new atmosphere’.

But of course it is all about the sport, and the organisers have really managed to apply Olympic 360-degree branding to the city. The Beijing Olympic logo, the colourful signage with the lucky clouds, the five mascots and countless slogans are applied to every bridge, every fence and every billboard that sat empty after the non-sponsors’ advertising was removed. The Olympic branding really is a welcome change in design and typography to this usually rather grey city. I only hope that when the factories are turned back on after the Olympics, that some of Beijing’s new art direction will stay for a little while longer.

Dirk Eschenbacher is executive creative director at Tribal DDB

Is the Olympics worth marketing in Indonesia?

By Partha Kabi

The Beijing Olympics are in the headline news everyday and will remain till the end of this mega sports event. However, given the low interest levels in some countries like Japan (as per your article in Media magazine) and Indonesia (and possibly in some other countries), one wonders if it is really a marketable event in these countries.

Lets take a look at the fourth largest populated country in the world – Indonesia. Sport has never been as popular as music or sinetrons in Indonesia. Having said that, specific sport such as soccer and badminton do generate adequate viewership among Indonesian TV viewers (the TVR’s for the Euro Cup and the Thomas/Uber cup bear testimony to that).

However, when it came to the biggest sports event – The Beijing Olympics 2008, sadly
enough, there were no takers. None of the big private TV stations were prepared to
telecast this mega event claiming it was not financially profitable. Which in other
words means (based on past history), this event does not generate enough viewership
and thereby very few sponsors and advertisers.

Thankfully, the Indonesian government decided to telecast this event live on TVRI.
However, the numbers for the Opening Ceremony were not that encouraging. Given the fact that TVRI is not a widely watched TV station and that very few people were aware that the Olympics will be telecast live on TVRI, yet, an event as big as the Olympics deserved better than a 0.6 TVR for the Opening Ceremony. The best match in the Euro Cup got 6.3 TVR, the Thomas/Uber cup got 9.4 TVR and even the F1 got a 1.4 TVR.

Given these numbers, I would not blame the big TV channels for not buying the rights to telecast this mega event. After all marketing communications start with the consumer and if the consumer is not interested, the product should not be forced onto the consumer. It will be important to see the TVR’s for the rest of the Olympic period before making a judgement on this issue. I am sure Indonesian interest levels would have been high during the badminton matches where Indonesia struck gold at the Olympics.

It will also be interesting to compare the interest levels in the Olympics versus cricket in the second largest populated country – India or for that matter Olympics versus baseball in the US and New Zealand or Olympics versus soccer in Brazil.

Partha Kabi is MD of ZenithOptimedia Indonesia

Vancouver searches for marketing lessons in Beijing

By Dominic Fitzsimmons

The world’s sporting attention may all be on Beijing, but behind the scenes the next Olympic hosts are quietly making sure that Vancouver 2010 goes off just as smoothly.

“We’re here learning and observing,” says Renée Smith-Valade, Vice-President of Communications for the Vancouver Organising Committee (VANOC).

This year they have brought the British Columbia Canada Pavilion to Tiananmen Square but, according to Annette Antoniak, the CEO of the BC Games Secretariat it is less about tourism as the region does not yet have approved destination status for Chinese tourists. “It is bringing the two regions’ businesses together an integral part of leveraging our CN$1,600 million budget that will goon to stimulate our economy.”

Smith-Valade denies that the Beijing event is an opportunity to seduce potential sponsors: “Vancouver has already raised $720 million in sponsorship – 94 per cent of its total target of $768 million.” The Vancouver venues will also be finished in October, 16 months ahead of the Winter Games, allowing for test events this autumn and winter.

One area where Vancouver is sure to better its huge predecessor is that of the sponsors’ village, with tight security being blamed for turning Beijing’s Olympic Green into a desert, devoid of people. “Our Sponsors’ Village will be set up on a very different scale, it will be far more concentrated and located around a harbour and along the waterfront,” says Smith-Valade. “We are learning how to best organise our Sponsors’ Village and have also bought several of our domestic sponsors to Beijing and they are meeting with [their 2008 counterparts] to find out how to maximise the role of Olympic sponsor,” she adds.

Joining worldwide Olympic partners such as Coca-Cola, General Electric, McDonalds and Visa in Vancouver will be national partners that include Bell, PetroCanada HBC and General Motors Canada as well as official supporters Air Canada, Canadian Pacific and Ricoh.

Dominic Fitzsimmons is a Media correspondent based in Beijing.

Olympic Green concerns? Not from Lenovo

By Deepak Advani

There has been some press in the last day reporting some of the Olympic sponsors are a little disappointed with the amount of traffic they are seeing at their pavilions on the Olympic Green. Sure, security requirements mean the visitors need a day pass to get onto the Green, but the place has incredible energy and we’re happy to be in the middle of it. I am very happy with how things have kicked off since Friday’s magnificent opening ceremony.

Lenovo built a sleek showcase on the Green that literally has lines of people waiting to get in at all hours of the day. Why?


Simple: we try to deliver a fun experience. From an official greeter who performs card tricks to an opportunity for our guests to have their picture taken holding the Olympic torch designed by Lenovo’s engineers, the facility is designed to be fun and exciting. Outside, facing the green there’s a stage where we have bands playing and multimedia displays rolling on the exterior walls.

For our partners and customers we built a briefing center on the top floor where our team can tell the story of how we power the Games with our desktop and notebook PCs. Starting in Torino in 2006 we’ve been preparing and rehearsing for this very public debut on the world stage and so far, not a hiccup has been reported. Customers want to hear that story and they want to see how we’re innovating in our engineering.

Our iLounges are where athletes and coaches can get come to relax and get online and blog. The demand for our PCs has been incredible and one of the most popular applications has been web teleconferencing with Skype or Microsoft Messenger. We’ve had to ask the athletes to limit their time to a couple hours at a stretch so everyone can have a chance to use the PCs.

So, we’re on the ground, our doors are open and we’re having a great time!

Deepak Advani, is Lenovo's chief marketing officer and senior vice-president for e-commerce. Lenovo

Perceiving China after the Opening Ceremony

By Duncan Clark

Attending the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympics on Friday night was an exhilarating experience. It also provided us a rare opportunity to think about how we each perceive China and its rapid re-emergence as a global player.

An unscientific survey - conducted by me talking to neighbours in the stadium during the ceremony and later to others watching on big screens or on television at home – revealed some key observations.

First, China – like the Opening Ceremony itself – is hard for anyone to sum up in one statement. Many observers, including myself, appear mostly awed by the technical wizardry and sheer human endeavour of the spectacle – the Ceremony that is, but equally the country. The precision and coordination required for so many human beings to come together to create a single wave of motion or arc of colour was inspiring.


Yet the comments of some western observers who had – on viewing earlier rehearsals - dismissed sections of Zhang Yimou’s choreography as akin to North Korea’s Mass Games were in my view way off mark. The emergence of hundreds of waving and grinning performers from beneath what were apparently soulless grey columns brought an instant human touch to the performance – and revealed I think the challenges for anyone trying to ‘define China’ with a broad characterisation.

Second, China provokes a wide range of emotions and opinions. While many western observers of the Ceremony enjoyed the historical themes including China’s innovations in paper making, seafaring or gunpowder, as many Chinese observers found the performance “too Chinese”, “backward looking” or “lacking in emotion”. The fact that no consensus exists on what China represents – to Chinese themselves or to observers from overseas – is precisely the reason why China will remain such a dominant topic in the decades ahead. China is changing, but opinions about China – from number one polluter one week to tragic victim of natural disaster the next – change even faster, and less predictably.

The Olympics has intensified this contradiction – at once emphasising the unquestioned importance of China, and the difficulties in assessing what this means for us all.

Duncan Clark is chairman of BDA

Beijing was right to tear down billboards

By David Wolf

The persistent grumble among marketers – particularly those who are not working for or with Olympic sponsors – is the ‘draconian’ measures taken by the municipal authorities when they mandated the removal of thousands of billboards and outdoor ads around Beijing in advance of the Olympics.

While many experienced China marketers simply shrugged off Beijing’s disappearing billboards as part of doing business in China, others were openly upset. One Asia-based marketer, in a fit of pique, even went so far as to chide Beijing for violating companies’ “right to advertise”.

I sympathise with my frustrated colleagues: watching a carefully designed media plan evaporate to nothing is no fun. Having media you have already purchased simply disappear for no apparently good reason – and then to have no substitute for a key chunk of your media buy – is downright enraging.

Advertising and communications plans are, after all, carefully timed and orchestrated efforts to grab a market opportunity. What we do affects the bottom lines of our companies and clients, and when we cannot do our job, we get hit where it hurts – the revenue line.

But as I drove around Beijing as preparation for the games reached a crescendo, I realized that the Olympic environment I was starting to enjoy was made more festive by the absence of Beijing’s normally ever-present outdoor advertising. Ads for mobile phones, milk, and custom homes had been replaced by the cheerful colours of the Olympics and the homey slogans Chinese call upon when rallying each other.

And it hit me: whatever their motivations or intentions, Beijing’s mandarins had been right to yank down the billboards for the Olympics. As maddening and arbitrary as it was, it was the right action to take.

So while the libertarian in me rankles, the marketer in me sees something else in the Case of the Headless Signposts: a reminder.

As our craft evolves, as marketers we find ourselves increasingly in the business not of creating ads, or campaigns, or impressions, but rather in the business of creating experiences. The brands, products, and services we flog are all moving in the same direction.

As creators and purveyors of experiences, events such as the Beijing Olympics are subtle reminders to us that sometimes we need to step back and see the greater whole. Whatever our ‘right’, real or perceived, to fill the world with our words and images, there are times where our absence speaks more loudly and appropriately than our presence.

After all, in a few weeks, things will be back to normal. I’d wager that when our ads do reappear in front of our creatively-deprived audiences, we’ll actually benefit from an upswing in attention.

Getting noticed would be nice, wouldn’t it?

David Wolf is founder of Wolf Group Asia