Branded Athens

August 12, 2004 8:35 AM

An overview of Athens' branded olympic experience. Considering how many brand geeks we've got, I thought this link to a style overview from the Athens Olympic Committee would be of some interest.
posted by silusGROK (17 comments total)

(An aside: Beijing officials have recently opened a design contest for their mascot, among other things!
posted by silusGROK at 8:53 AM on August 12, 2004

Athens has Phevos and Athena



Cute, in a weird sort of way. (and those things on Athenas chest, are those weird x-boobs?)
posted by milovoo at 8:59 AM on August 12, 2004

Ugh. Well, they're better than the mascot of the 1996 Atlanta games, at least.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:17 AM on August 12, 2004

The "branded Olympic experience" also means you can't bring in food or drink purchased from a non-sponsor.
posted by pmurray63 at 9:21 AM on August 12, 2004

According to the Beijing 2008 History of Olympic Mascots page, I agree that Izzy is by far the most hideous mascot. Waldi looked pretty cool.
posted by kokogiak at 9:48 AM on August 12, 2004

There are some nice items in the product "catalogue", but there is no on-line store.
You can buy some things from NBC.
posted by scalz at 9:48 AM on August 12, 2004

Pmurray63 (there were 62 other pmurrays registered here?) that amount of corporate ownz0rship of the Olympics is vomit inducing.
posted by Blue Stone at 10:11 AM on August 12, 2004

why not a nice Panda for the China games? And maybe a Wolf or something from a Greek god story? Maybe Athena? Or Nike? (the goddess you silly, not the sneakers)

Who decided to make cartoon characters as mascots?
posted by Red58 at 10:11 AM on August 12, 2004

Who decided to make cartoon characters as mascots?

More importantly, who decided to give said cartoon characters great-big-God-A'mighty-goonie-goo-goo feet?
posted by grabbingsand at 11:07 AM on August 12, 2004

Apparently the Greek mascots are based on some ancient toys. In which case, I will quit thinking of them as weird-looking condoms, and start thinking of them as a child's dolls.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:27 AM on August 12, 2004

The "branded Olympic experience" also means you can't bring in food or drink purchased from a non-sponsor.

In general, at olympics events there are a lot of theoretical rules. This probably won't really get enforced unless you are holding up a 3' by 3' "drink pepsi" sign, or are being a jerk, plus it looks good if you have that on the contract when the corporations give you all that money.

Also, another thing to keep in mind is that it's not like lollapalooza, they aren't usually making you pay for these branded beverages, they are handing them out for free from the back of giant trucks so if you are watching on television it just looks like everyone at the whole venue just spontaneously wanted coke in a coke-branded cup. If they give stuff away for free they like a little goodwill back.

After all that defending, I do admit that the commercialism of the whole thing is sometimes a bit too much.
posted by milovoo at 12:08 PM on August 12, 2004

I wish the icons associated with each sport were displayed at a larger size on the web site. It's always been an aspiration of mine to design those. Maybe some day . . .
posted by quadog at 2:34 PM on August 12, 2004

I wish the icons associated with each sport were displayed at a larger size on the web site. It's always been an aspiration of mine to design those. Maybe some day . . .

Here's the Beijing 2008 ones if you are interested. I also remember liking the venue icons for the Pan-Am games (although I can't find the specific ones) a few years ago, maybe you could start there and work you way up. I quite like their Rio logo.

posted by milovoo at 3:19 PM on August 12, 2004

For the Beijing venue icons, the Judo one is a bit weird,
it looks like "man in inflatable chair watching TV"

I realize the necessity to separate it from taekwando

but maybe something a bit more active?
posted by milovoo at 3:23 PM on August 12, 2004

Thanks for the links Milovoo. I agree, the judo icon above looks a like something from the couch potato olympics.
posted by quadog at 4:53 PM on August 12, 2004

I thought there were IEC-standardized icons for the sports. IEC? ISO? ISA? Something like that. International standard.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:40 PM on August 12, 2004

Maybe Athena? Or Nike?

The mascot on the left is Athena (it says so under her).

"Nike" is one of the epithets of Athena: Athena Nike, meaning victorious, what she was called when she went to (just) war.
posted by signal at 7:16 PM on August 12, 2004