Coca-Cola is capping its London 2012 Olympics sponsorship with its biggest giveaway ever in the U.K., where it's also sponsoring the 2012 Paralympic Games.

The soft drink giant is running a one-day promotion, Monday Sept. 3rd only, giving away 500ml bottles of Coca-Cola, Coke Zero or Diet Coke at Boots and Superdrug stores to those who register first online. It's being promoted with a 100-foot tall vending machine in London's Brick Lane, as you can see in the TV spot which features "Anywhere in the World," the brand's original London 2012 song created by producer Mark Ronson.

As part of its top-tier Olympics sponsorship, Coca-Cola underwrote the London Olympics torch relay and launched "Move to the Beat," a music-based global marketing platform, in addition to installing a giant interactive Beatbox pavilion at the London Olympics site.

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...

David Beckham was all over the London 2012 Olympics, bringing the torch to the Olympic stadium in a boat, photo-bombing Adidas-sponsored local marketing, "directing" the brand's last commercial, hyping Samsung's Galaxy III and cheering on wife Victoria's Posh Spice revisited turn at the Closing Ceremony. He was even projected onto England's iconic white cliffs of Dover wearing only his H&M skivvies, a controversial stunt that foreshadowed the latest phase of his underwear campaign for the brand that continues this week.

Nine larger-than-life 11-foot statues of Beckham are coming to Los Angeles, New York's Flatiron District and San Francisco as H&M looks to drive sales of Beckham's bodywear line. (Follow the hashtag #HMBeckham for details on a related contest.) He's also the Paralympics brand ambassador for British grocer Sainsbury's, with a new campaign breaking Thursday that promotes the Games' UK telecast on Channel 4. Check it out below.Continue reading...

The five young women who won Olympic gymnastics gold for the United States in London were repeatedly called the Fab Five by television announcers and others. But that term has already been trademarked by basketball player Jalen Rose, who was on the 1991 Michigan team that used that same nickname.

So USA Gymnastics is planning to try and trademark the term “Fierce Five” to honor the team and make a few bucks in the process, according to Bloomberg. The team will have to battle for the trademark, though it will likely be easier than beating out Russia for the gold to get it. Continue reading...

Apple rumor created by Swedes as a prank goes viral.

BP nets $2.5bn in deal to sell Californian refinery business and Arco brand.

Canada's media ownership concentration criticized in new report.

Chad Johnson negates powerful personal brand as VH1 series cancelled.

Cosmopolitan founder Helen Gurley Brown passes, remembered, at 90.

Dewar's global brand ambassador chats with the New York Times.

Ford banks on 2013 Fiesta.

GE and Chobani take gold in Ace Metrix Olympics ad ranker.

HarperCollins plans pop-up record store to promote new book.Continue reading...

No Chinese Olympian needed to have a better 2012 Games than Li-Ning. While Li himself was no longer competing on the gymnastics stage, he was competing as the newly reinstated CEO of the wobbly sportswear brand that bears his name.

With Nike making a high-profile move to sponsor gold medalist hurdler Liu Xiang and the wildly popular China basketball team, Li-Ning desperately a monster showing in London. It got it.Continue reading...

It’s a wrap for the London 2012 Olympics, and in addition to the new athletic records that were set, fans, brands and athletes interacting together collectively took the gold as the undisputed winner of the first Social Olympics.

From the opening ceremony on July 27th, which generated 9.66 million tweets (and in the next 24 hours more than all those during the entire 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing), a total of more than 150 million tweets were shared during and about the Olympics.

World's Fastest Man™ Usain Bolt was the most talked about athlete, inspiring a blinding fast 80,000 tweets per minute (TPM) during his gold medal-winning 200m sprint and 74,000 TPM during his 100m run, while the Spice Girls reunion at the closing ceremony inspired 116,000 TPM.

Twitter's recap highlights other social highlights of these games including: Michael Phelps and Tom Daley trailing Bolt as the most discussed athletes, and Andy Murray, third-highest at 57,000 TPM after winning the gold medal in men’s tennis singles.Continue reading...