{"id":1154,"date":"2014-02-21T01:58:25","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T01:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2016-11-16T03:24:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T03:24:22","slug":"sochi-and-the-olympic-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/sochi-and-the-olympic-brand\/","title":{"rendered":"Sochi and the Olympic Brand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks of winter games are drawing to a close this Sunday, and we should all expect plenty of retrospectives over the weekend.\u00a0 With ample coverage sure to be given to Ted Ligety\u2019s win (and, we think, the robbery of Yuna Kim\u2019s gold \u2013 did judges see<\/i> her performance?), we\u2019re hoping a portion of the press\u2019 review will be given to Sochi\u2019s Olympic brand as a whole.\u00a0 No, not in regards to the now infamous twitter handle @SochiProblems \u2013 which has more followers than the Olympic handle itself \u2013 and the arguable bungling of the Olympic Village construction, but of the ethical, and PR-related, implications of the host country\u2019s human right\u2019s record, which is highly questionable at best.<\/p>\n

\"putin-sochi-olympics\"<\/p>\n

The impending Opening Ceremony amplified discussion of Russia\u2019s institutional homophobia, systemic political suppression, and poverty.\u00a0 Following the country\u2019s recent ratification of draconian anti-gay laws, many world leaders \u2013 President Obama included \u2013 opted out of a visit to Sochi. \u00a0Nadya Tolokonnikova, and other activists and celebrities, called for a boycott of the games (and while we\u2019re on Pussy Riot, one can\u2019t help but see Nadia\u2019s early release from a politically motivated prison term as a pitifully transparent ploy on the part of the Putin administration to curry international favor in advance of the ceremonies).<\/p>\n

\"yuna-kim-sochi-2014\"<\/p>\n

@SochiProblems co-opted what could have been a more productive conversation to clearly delineate Olympic brand values \u2013 we know what the games stand for in the broad sense, but what won\u2019t<\/i> they stand for?\u00a0 Several articles following the opening ceremonies began this discussion, including this one<\/a> in Branding Magazine, which went so far as to call the International Olympic Committee\u2019s decision to have the games in Sochi \u201cmismanaged\u201d while claiming potential damage to the Olympic brand.<\/p>\n

\"germany-sochi-olympic-uniforms\"<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not too sure the Sochi games will have all that negative an impact on the Olympic brand as a whole, which is far too large an international symbol at this point to allow any individual bungle to besmirch the name, or the idea<\/i>, for that matter (the Olympic brand has endured hypocrisy before \u2013think Berlin 1936, for instance).<\/p>\n

Having said that, there were many redemptive elements from the chorus of competing nations that added positive value and spirit to the overcast of controversy.\u00a0 Think Germany\u2019s Opening Ceremony uniforms, an LGBT-friendly rainbow color-scheme.\u00a0 Maybe the message to be gleaned is that, on so grand a scale, no one bad egg can spoil the whole carton \u2013 even the host nation, it would seem.\u00a0 Unless they went really out of their way.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not letting the IOC turn a cold shoulder to calls\u00a0 to delineate and implement higher brand standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks of winter games are drawing to a close this Sunday, and we should all expect plenty of retrospectives over the weekend.\u00a0 With ample coverage sure to be given…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-branding"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Sochi-2014-1024x7681.jpg",1024,768,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Sochi-2014-1024x7681-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Sochi-2014-1024x7681-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Sochi-2014-1024x7681-768x576.jpg",768,576,true],"large":["https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Sochi-2014-1024x7681-1024x768.jpg",1024,768,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Sochi-2014-1024x7681.jpg",1024,768,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Sochi-2014-1024x7681.jpg",1024,768,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":2,"uagb_excerpt":"Two weeks of winter games are drawing to a close this Sunday, and we should all expect plenty of retrospectives over the weekend.\u00a0 With ample coverage sure to be given...","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1174,"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/1174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagemme.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}