International I Hate Sports Club

ABC-TV Gruen Sweat wrote: 00:33
HOST: G'day, I'm Wil Anderson. This is "Gruen Sweat," a four part series about the London 2012 Olympics, where the worlds most competitive brands come together to fight for glory and gold. Mostly gold. We'll meet tonight's panel in a moment, but first, brands have been part of the Olympics since the modern games began in Athens in 1896. Those games were partly underwritten by ads in the souvenir program for the likes of Kodak. I wonder what their slogan was back then? - "Coming soon, the camera."

The orgy of selling starts before the games even begin. Take the torch relay. Pure marketing. It's origins don't even date back to ancient Greece. They go back to these guys. [Image of Nazis shown]. Yes. Prince Harry's mates. But no, to 1936 and Berlin, where the torch relay run was staged as a PR exercise. It was meant to draw a line from Greek civilisation to the Third Reich. And it was all going well, until someone on the torch relay tried to run into Poland. What? Too soon?

Seventy five years later, the relay is still about PR for the games, but also for sponsors like Samsung, and Coke who get to gee up crowds along the route and reward their own staff. You might think the actual torch runners would be local heroes, but eight hundred slots are reserved for sponsors and admin. The torch relay is also about political spin, allowing village Mayors to get photo opportunities wearing giant penis costumes, and international pop stars like Will.i.am to indulge in product placement. Here he is thanking Coca-Cola for letting him run while Tweeting on his Blackberry torch phone. Yeah, they invited Snoop Dogg, but he used the torch to light a giant joint.

05:35
HOST: Let's follow the money. Eleven brands have paid $100 million each to be "World Wide Olympic Partners." Seven have handed over $63 million to be "London 2012 Partners." Six have spent $31 million to call themselves "London Supporters." Twenty-eight more have forked out $15 million to be "Official Suppliers and Providers."