Marketing Against the Marketers

As part of these summer games, the London Organising Committeeof the Olympic Games (LOCOG) have issued strong brand protection guidelines that detail what you can't say, and the combinations of words that are banned. They even go so far as to help with organising parties in your own home or street.

This all adds a slightly big brother edge to the games though, as I described in my previous post, and as Oddbins have observed. This report in the Drum website describes how Oddbins are tackling these brand restrictions head-on. Their marketing director describes the campaign as "a marketing counter-strike in defiance of the labyrinthine restrictions placed on businesses by the Olympics’ legion of brand guardians".

As well as a prominent window display campaign, anyone who comes into an Oddbins branch wearing Nike trainers and has in their pocket a set of Vauxhall car keys, an RBS MasterCard, an iPhone, a bill from British Gas and a receipt for a Pepsi bought at KFC will receive 30 per cent off their purchase.

So it's good to see some marketing creativity coming out of the games. As a campaign, it stands out cleverly, alongside British Airways brilliant Home Advantage campaign urging us: "Don't Fly. Support Team GB." Also, in the defiantly anti-brand-strangling bracket is the Lodnon 2012 Oimplycs campaign, undertaken in a window display by Focus Formal Wear, again in protest at being told how not to capitalise on a vibrant time in the UK.