Is this a tempest in a teacup? Stella McCartney's Team Great Britain Adidas-produced gear for the London 2012 summer Olympics has a few of her fellow Brits up in arms. The reason? Too much blue in the Union Jack and not enough red for some tastes.

With the opening ceremony on July 27th, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games watch is heating up. This week Visa Europe unveiled its pre-Olympics TV campaign, featuring Usain Bolt (the brand’s "Europe Innovation Ambassador") racing through London. Adidas also unveiled the Stella McCartney-designed Olympics apparel that British athletes will be wearing throughout the competitions.

First, to the world's fastest man: "Bolt embodies speed, effortlessness and performance – the ability to deliver even on the world’s biggest stage. Similarly for Visa Europe, London 2012 is a showcase for our latest payments technology including contactless and mobile payments, which will enable cardholders to experience a secure, reliable and fast payments infrastructure for the Games and beyond,” said Mariano Dima, EVP Product and Marketing Solutions, Visa Europe.Continue reading...

What a difference a year — let alone a day — makes in the National Football League.

Last year, the NFL, owners, management and players were just settling in for what promised to be a long-haul labor dispute which essentially kept professional football out of the regular flow of news for months, during the crucial time after the April draft when fan excitement typically builds over prospects for the coming season. Its relevance and even the NFL brand faded for a while.

This year, however, the NFL's off season is pulling a 180-degree turn worthy of the league's nimblest scatback. Today's announcement by Commissioner Roger Goodell of very stiff penalties for head coach Sean Payton and others associated with the New Orleans Saints for their bounty-hunting exploits broke on the same day that the Denver Broncos traded the closely watched Tim Tebow to that media-wallflower team, the New York Jets.

And oh, yes — the signing of Peyton Manning by those same Broncos? That already is so two days ago.Continue reading...

The London 2012 Summer Olympics organizers are getting ready to do battle against ambush marketers, the stealth marketing and advertising that undermines official sponsors' efforts. It's an issue that's top of mind for LOCOG — the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games — and social networks are ready to help.

“Twitter has agreed to prevent brands from using the social network for Olympic 'ambush marketing' attempts,” according to eConsultancy. LOCOG has signed £670m ($1 billion) in sponsorship deals so it doesn’t want any of those partners getting upset about nonsponsors stealing their thunder during the Games.Continue reading...

Sure, the New York Knicks are on a six-game losing streak (their second this season), leading to the ouster/resignation today of head coach Mike D'Antoni. Sure, point guard Jeremy Lin hasn’t been topping 20 points as consistently as he did when he came into the starting lineup back in early February and led the team to a seven-game winning streak. Sure, Linsanity isn’t quite as intense in the Big Apple as it once was, where his merchandise is being marked down in Times Square.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who still love the guy, who you may have heard is the first Taiwanese- or Chinese-American to play in the NBA. Some of those folks are execs at Volvo, which is reportedly considering signing the Harvard grad to an endorsement deal in China, the company’s “fastest-growing market,” according to Bloomberg, and a huge market for Lin. Volvo is hoping to be selling 800,000 vehicles there by 2020.Continue reading...

Tobacco companies in the United States have been dealing with legal fireworks for years, but things are finally heating up for the their Canadian brethren. This week a class-action case is scheduled to head to court that could cost the companies “up to $27 billion in damages and penalties at stake,” according to the Canadian Press.

The smokers claim that “they were duped for years by big tobacco companies as they became addicted to cigarettes (and) then suffered from serious health problems,” the CP reports. The three defendants in the case -- Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd.; Rothmans, Benson & Hedges; and JTI-Macdonald – clearly disagree.

The case was born way back in 1998 when two different suits were filed against the companies. They were consolidated in 2005 and will now finally reach the courtroom.

“I’ve tried (to quit) five or six times in the last 14 years,” said Jean-Yves Blais, who still smokes after 57 years of doing so, despite getting part of a lung removed due to cancer, the wire service reports. “I smoke a little more than one package a day — maybe 30 cigarettes a day.”Continue reading...

At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the India Olympic Committee sent 56 athletes to compete and came home with its best performance in history: one gold (men’s 10m air rifle shooting) and two bronze (wrestling and boxing).

It remains unclear if any Indian athletes will be showing up at the London 2012 Summer Games due to the massive presence of Olympic sponsor Dow Chemicals, which is “sponsoring a $11.4-million decorative wrap that will be installed around London's Olympic Stadium,” according to the Associated Press.

The problem stems from Dow’s ownership of Union Carbide, which it bought in 2000, 16 years after Union’s plant in Bhopal had a gas leak that “killed an estimated 15,000 people and injured half a million,” the AP notes. While Dow didn’t own Union when the incident happened, critics say the company is “responsible for lingering groundwater contamination and other issues,” the AP notes.Continue reading...

Major sporting events and major brands go hand in hand, and marketers can't get started early enough with pre-event promotions. 

Witness the recent Super Bowl. An unprecedented number of Super Bowl ads appeared prior to the Super Bowl, as online unveilings appeared via YouTube and on promotional websites. Some pundits questioned the wisdom of such pre-game publicity, wondering if it simply undermined advertising effectiveness.

But that isn't stopping big brands from doing it again, this time in advance of the 2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London. Coca-Cola, a major Super Bowl advertiser, has gone public with its "Move to the Beat" London 2012 Olympics campaign that was announced in September.Continue reading...