Business and Blogging

Social Media on London Olympics Logo

by Des Walsh on June 5th, 2007

The morning television here gave us the visual on the just-launched logo for the London 2012 Olympics.

The first site my online search brought up was the BBC, which displays the image, with the explanation

The jagged emblem, based on the date 2012, comes in a series of shades of pink, blue, green and orange and will evolve in the run-up to the Games.

and quotes the organising committee chairman “Seb Coe” as declaring:

“This is the vision at the very heart of our brand”.

I presume he knows what that means. I find it obscure.

Seth is less than complimentary about Lord Sebastian Coe’s commentary.

And I can’t help wondering whether the organisers, or their designers, or their PR people, took account of the potential impact of social media.

And if so, did they expect that one video, for example, could in a matter of hours attract a claimed 10,000 signatures of protest? And what strategy did they devise to deal with that? No doubt all will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Or not.

As I look now there are 2976 comments on the BBC item, one of the most recent, from unbeatableimogen, says in part:

RIDICULOUS!! It’s impossible for this logo to be any worse. There are far better logos sent in by the public (logo 1 and 6 on the link on the last page!). Please London Olympic Committee—-it’s not too late to change it! The deformed swastika has to go! How on earth does this inspire anyone?! It makes me feel depressed and ashamed! I’m 17 and this is certainly not ‘cool’!!

That’s the tone of a number of comments I’ve read. The swastika comment must hurt. It’s a good symbol in Bali, for instance, but not in the UK.

Mind you, the other logos depicted in the video above would not make me sit up in my chair.

And it’s not that I underestimate in any way the challenge the organising committee and the designers faced.

In fact, until I worked on some major public events some years ago, I didn’t have any comprehension of how challenging it is to create a logo that is going to fulfill all the demands to be made on it.

As a commenter on one blog post puts it:

An Olympic logo is more than just a logo, it is the basis for a graphic system of signage, typography, merchandise, iconography, and even architecture.

And before you get to actually doing those things and showing other event partners how to implement the design so that it works with their own logos, there is the challenge of getting a design which:

• the design firm is happy to have their name on
• the committee or committees who must approve it are happy - most of the members probably knowing next to nothing about design except that they “know what they like”
• the organisation paying the designers’ bill is not going to be outraged
• if it’s being paid for with public money the politicians are not going to cave in at the first sign of any negative public or media reaction
• the media are not going to savage it irretrievably
• the design community is not going to disown or scorn it

Not easy, if actually possible, for everyone to win.

And certainly in the days when I was working on this sort of challenge we did not have to deal with the sort of avalanche of comment, satire, and instant petition-generation that the London Olympics organising committee now has to deal with. A couple of grumpy newspaper articles, a few letters to the editor, perhaps some letters to the Prime Minister. All fairly manageable with a reasonably seasoned, road travelled ex-journalist PR person or two on staff.

Different story now with all these tools for the citizenry to voice their opinions and spread them around the planet instantly.

It would be interesting to know how much notice design companies are taking of the current furore, how that will affect their briefing of clients, how they will handle logo launches in future.

And let’s get real, it’s not just the bloggers, because mainstream media are picking up on - or actually running (e.g. the BBC) the blogs. See for example the News Ltd comment in Adelaide, Australia:

Within hours of the launch, an online petition was set up asking for a new logo or a return to the bid design. By late Monday, the petition had received more than 5500 signatures.

Blogs on newspaper Web sites for The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the British Broadcasting Corp. and Design Week magazine all contained negative comments on the design.

And as governments, whether national, state/provincial or local, are often footing the bill for bid design and event design, how much notice are the relevant or could-be-relevant public officials taking of these events?

There’s got to be a public affairs company out there already putting together their risk-management kit for just such a situation.

Or not?

Perhaps there have to be several incidents like this before people gear up, so as not to be caught flat-footed by the suddenness and pervasiveness of a social media facilitated response to a launch.

(Update June 7: see also Susan Gunelius’ post on an absurd amount of money to pay for a logo)

Technorati Tags: London 2012 Olympics logo, London Olympic logo, Lord Coe, design, social media, bloggers, video, London Olympics, PR, public affairs

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