So, here we go. As the calendar prepares to turn over a new page into 2008, only one thing (other than inflation) will really matter in China: the Beijing Olympic Games. China will have waited seven years since its right to host the world’s largest sporting event was announced, and it cannot wait. The phrase ‘fever pitch’ is too way too weak for the Olympic-sized furore that will be whipped up from around late Spring onwards.

In an effort to counter widespread expectations of an ambush marketing fiesta, Olympic partner companies, brands associated with major sporting events and teams and almost everyone else, it seems, is already pumping out Beijing-based advertising content. China is now awash with Olympic imagery. A short ride on the Shanghai subway is enough to see that. The on-board TV screens and platform hoardings feature little else, other than occasional NFL mini highlights packages. Chinese TV stations are airing slick 2008 Games promos, while magazines and radio slots are already filled with Games content. 

The best Olympic effort so far is Adidas’ very clever virtual reality cartoon style TV ads, featuring basketball, football, volleyball and diving. The athletes, wearing Chinese national sportswear, are filmed in vivid slo-mo colour as they play their sport above vast masses of waving and cheering people etched out in black-and-white. The imagery harks subtly back to China’s mass propaganda ads of the 1960s, but adds a cutting edge injection of new millennium technology and Olympian optimism.

Another eye-catching new ad is Panasonic’s TV screen sequence shot at the 798 art space in Beijing, a sparse, concrete-chic former factory compound, which in recent years has become the cradle of the commercialisation of contemporary Chinese art – and is regularly used by fashion brands to launch their new seasonal colelctions. UPS is also in the game, decorating subway stops with bold posters of its uniformed staff delivering boxed packages while indulging in a little Olympian sporting action.

But, that’s just the start. There will be more – much, much more. Watch this space.

Last update : Saturday, 08 December 2007

Keywords : Beijing, Olympics, Games, 2008, Advertising, Adidas, Panasonic, UPS

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