Have you visited the London 2012 Olympic homepage recently? Like, very recently. They've shifted the usual homepage out of the way to make room for a full screen splash announcing the imminent launch of the new London 2012 brand. It's being launched on Monday, in front of "a select audience of London 2012 friends and family". Presumably this is the great and thrilling moment when someone fires up a Powerpoint presentation and reveals • the London 2012 brand all-inclusive slogan • the London 2012 brand swirly logo wotsit • the London 2012 brand mission statement thingy
I bet you can't wait.
This being the 21st century, the announcement has to be preceded by an 4-day online awareness campaign. It's no longer good enough simply to announce "we have a brand". You have to attempt to stir up interest in advance with a series of internet mutterings and word-of-mouth recommendations. These are called "digital touchpoints" (honest) according to the "user experience designers" (honest) who created them. They've tried to created a sense of pre-launch mystery by hiding viral videos around the web in the hope that bloggers will start talking about them. Well, they've got their way, because that's exactly what I'm doing. But not in a good way. Not good at all.
"Solve today's clue to find a sneak preview of what it's all about." Sigh. Who's going to be inspired to hunt down an embedded video on a hard-to-find blog. Thursday's chosen blog shunted the "clue post" off their front page in 16 hours flat, such was their interest. Today's blog hasn't even stuck the video on their front page in the first place, because the feed isn't working properly. Great stuff. And, even after you've finally located them, each preview presentation turns out to be worthy but dull, better suited to motivating a school assembly than an online audience.
There was me hoping that the 2012 Olympics might be about sport. Silly me. It appears to be about brand values (namely "Passion", "Inspiration", "Participation" and "Stimulation") and corporate behemoths aligning their marketing strategies to fit preferred sponsor niches. How much am I bid for a bit of "Olympic Spirit"? To the average Londoner, all of this media-savvy branding is just a stream of inconsequential drivel. We're just not interested. Please, can we get back to talking about building swimming pools, developing young athletes and knocking down electricity pylons. Thank you.
(oh and Amy, can I assure you that I started writing this post before you sent me your oh-so-hopeful email)
