A peak audience of 11.2 million watched Channel 4's broadcast of the rousing opening ceremony for the London 2012 Paralympic Games, titled “Enlightenment.” An average 7.7 million tuned in to see the four-hour show on August 29th. (Not coincidentally, the Queen entered the stadium at 8:45pm, when viewing peaked.)

The British broadcaster reported that it was its largest audience in more than 10 years. "Last night's opening ceremony was a spectacular start to the London 2012 Paralympic Games," said Channel 4's Jay Hunt. "I'm delighted that so many viewers enjoyed it with us." 

The ceremony, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and following on from the "pandemonium" of the London 2012 Games Opening Ceremony, focused on the story of scientific discovery and education.

Sir Ian McKellen danced to a stirring version of "I Am What I Am," as the stadium was transformed into a representation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Accompanied by narration from physicist Stephen Hawking, a new musical piece based on Newton’s Principia Mathematica underscored the theme of the Games: ability and achievement come in many forms.Continue reading...

Eleven companies shelled out megabucks to be named worldwide partners for the London Olympic Games. Three of them are sticking around to do the same for the Paralympics that kick off Wednesday: Atos, Samsun, and Visa.

So you’d think people would celebrating these brands that are supporting such an awesome and noble event that will get a sliver of the coverage that Usain Bolt alone got in the United States. But, well, no. Atos is catching some major grief this week because Brits aren’t liking “its handling of a £100m-a-year contract with the (government) to assess whether people claiming for sickness and disability benefits are fit for work,” according to Marketing Week. 

A week of action against Atos commenced yesterday by such groups as Disabled People Against Cuts and UK Uncut, which claim that the company has “devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands of disabled people” in the United Kingdom, Marketing Week reports. Continue reading...

The Olympics in London will kick off on July 27 with an Opening Ceremony that’s already been cut back a bit so that those attending will be able to get home on the trains. Of course, that’s if there are trains running at all. The AP is reporting that about 400 employees of the train system are threatening to strike. If that weren’t enough, border guards at Europe’s largest airport, Heathrow, are also saying they’ll walk off the job the night before the Games get started. Enjoy London, everybody who shelled out big bucks to get there. At least visitors can hop on one of the hard-to-miss sponsor-wrapped buses that CBS Outdoor UK is creating for the likes of Visa and other brands. More below on the latest from London.Continue reading...

The way the world communicates with one another is ever-evolving as new technologies continue to appear and social media continues to introduce new avenues of expression. With that, brands are always finding new ways to touch their customers and all of the classic branding rules are being tossed out the window.

Olympic sponsorship has long been a way for major brands to reach consumers every few years, but international Olympic executives are looking to possibly shift how the model works in order to embrace this new world.

The sponsorship model now in place brings in $1 billion, according to the Financial Times, but the IOC is planning to “take a step back” and re-assess the sponsorship strategy going forward.Continue reading...