Olympics Adverts in London

Bonjour!

This is slightly continuing from my last two posts, about how the London 2012 Olympics has used marketing and advertising in differing areas.

Now, obviously I went into London and had a look around to see where the Olympics is reaching its audience, and why it would put certain adverts in places. And oh my, I found quite a lot!

This flag is just one of the thousands blowing in the streets of London, attached to 30 ft poles and are seen down nearly every major street in town! It was, to say the least, amazing. Not only were they tall for all to see, look at the colours! It's a bright reddy orange with the very noticeable logo at the bottom. Like I said, there were thousands of these, in every bright, noticeable colours such as blues and pinks. If that doesn't grab the public's attention, then maybe this will.




Yes, on over half of the London buses, plastered alongside the iconic public transport, were Olympic related adverts. In these pictures it was one of their official sponsors; Cadbury chocolate. Chocolate is seen as quite a fun treat (for some anyway), and their adverts can display their informal, almost playful side by having 'how many Dairy Milks can contenders jump over' and 'how many Dairy Milks weigh the same as a shotput'. So although Cadbury are advertising their product and brand, they are also including the Olympics, as Shotput and Long jump are involved. But this wasn't all!

No no fellow readers, flags of colour and transport of sponsor are just not enough for the Olympics. Telephone booths are also plastered with more, more and more adverts for the Olympics, and this example is with British Telecom. Their slogan 'Bringing us all together for London 2012' is nothing less than perfect. (For all those who need an explanation, the Olympics brings the world together, and BT do phones and internet, which connects people. I'm glad we got there ;)

Alas, there is more.  Great LED billboards like this present yet another sponsor of the Olympics doing what it does best; telling the whole world that it exists. In this example, the Sun displays patriotism with 'Lets make it Great, Britain' and also mentions a free Olympic pull out every day. This could tempt people to buy the Sun regularly, just to get the entire 'collection' of what they have to offer, therefore raising the Sun's sales.






In this post, I have shown you examples of the Olympic's sponsors, like Coke-a-Cola, BT, Cadbury and The Sun. These are just a few of the largest companies sponsoring the event. From a marketing point of view, one can already tell that the event is going to be a Mega Event. 'Mega Events should exceed 1 million visitors and be a 'must see' in nature' (Marris 1987). Vanhove and Witt (1987) added that they should attract worldwide publicity, which the Olympics certainly does.