After the hiatus in posting over the summer we are back with another posting from one of our PATLIB UK centres. Our colleagues in Glasgow have recovered after the euphoria of the Commonwealth Games and reflect on intellectual property's role in the games.
Glasgow
was buzzing and the medal winners were amazing but it wasn't all about the
sport or indeed the legacy.
Branding
and sponsorship has in these Games as it did in the London Olympics and indeed
in every modern major sporting event played a vital part. To see the beginnings of modern sports
sponsorship you have to go back to 1852 when a marketing-savvy agent for the Boston , Concord Athens
One
of the first major moves of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Organising
Committee
was to create a trademark prior to their successful bid for the Commonwealth
Games XX. To date the committee has fourteen trademarks registered with the
Intellectual Property Office and one more which is under examination which
appears not only on the merchandise being sold but has been inculcated into the
advertising of the sponsors who donated varying
sums of money or goods in order to be associated with the Games and thereby
gain access to the worldwide audience which it is attracting. It is in effect a series of partnerships in
which each contributes something unique to itself and gains something which it
doesn’t have access to.
The
sponsors of course then build a marketing campaign around their
involvement. A.G. Barr the maker of our
“other national drink” (Irn Bru for the uninitiated) set aside £12m for their multi-brand marketing in the run up to the
Games.
Virgin Media on the other hand is
giving Games visitors a chance to race against Usain Bolt – virtually that is
– in their engagement marketing campaign which will run for the duration of the
Games.
Tunnock’s the manufacturers of
the teacakes which caused such a storm in the opening ceremony must be counting
every one of their £ well-spent when their sales rose by 62% as the dancing
teacakes dominated the headlines and Twitter.
This
is one of the reasons why the protection of the brand identity through logos
and trademarks is so important to the integrity of the partnership and is
indeed protected in law. You can’t have
a company paying (either in cash or in kind) for an association with such an
important worldwide event and then allow a non-contributing competitor to enjoy
the same association by displaying the Games trademarks or advertising their
products at the Games.
This
of course can lead to all sorts of problems such as ambush marketing – a
marketing technique in which advertisers work to connect their product with a
particular event in the minds of potential customers, without having to pay
sponsorship. One of the most awkward
moments of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was when 36 young women dressed in orange
mini skirts associated with the Dutch brewers Bavaria
entered the stands and were swiftly ejected.
Two of the perpetrators according to a BBC report were arrested for organising
“unlawful commercial activities”.
Brand
protection is a very complicated subject as Lord Coe found out shortly before
the London Olympics when he was reported as saying that spectators would not be
allowed to wear t shirts emblazoned
with Pepsi logos as Coca-Cola were one of the official sponsors.
On
a lighter note my colleague’s boyfriend has had occasion to don one of the
Clyde costumes but she assured me that he wasn’t the real Clyde
who accompanies the Queen’s baton. I had
a vision of a six foot thistle man waking up early on Christmas morning to find
a rotund gentleman with a long white beard and dressed in a red suit at the
bottom of his bed greeting him with the words: “The real Clyde
I presume. How do you do I’m the real
Santa.”
Catherine Queen
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