Next week, I’ll lecture at UWS on what I see as the two major controversies arising from the forthcoming Olympic Games: Doping and New Media Activism.
This lecture will be written up for the Huffington Post. Keep watching.
All students are wellcome. Place a comment in this website, if you’d like to attend. It’s on ou Hamilton campus from 1:30pm.
Image (C) VANOC / COVAN
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I agree Andy that doping & new media activism are at the forefront of Olympic controversy. Doping has always been a challenge, but new media is the issue having the most impact on the health of the Games.
For example, Chicago lost the 2016 bid to Rio partially because the new media resistance in Chicago was so well organized, but also because in general, the sophistication of new media is less advanced in Brazil, which poses less of an ambush marketing threat to official Olympic sponsors like Coca-Cola and Visa. Granted, Brazil is a growing South American power with a stronger economy than most, but not in relation to global impact.
If I were the IOC, I’d much rather deal with Rio than Europe or America in this respect, at least until social media is more defined and the IOC has a better understanding of it. The challenge the IOC has however is similar to that of newspapers who ignored and undermined the internet for years naively believing they could eventually control it.
For the record, I’m pro-Olympics – with a Twist, which means I love the sport, but hate the politics.
I’ve cautioned traditional street protestors in Vancouver for years that the fight is no longer on the ground. It is in the Ethernet and that they are foolish to go head to head with a patriotic IOC army that is hundreds if not thousands of times their size physically and economically.
Anti-Olympic activists will never be successful in their goal to kill the Olympics. You can’t kill an institution so ingrained in society, but if they use social media properly they can help fix it. The IOC purposely polarizes anti and pro Olympic groups because it keeps people in Host communities fighting among themselves instead of finding fault with the IOC – an old Sun Tzu strategy.
Vancouver is the first Olympic city to be in such a powerful “new media” position, but alas we are not organized enough to leverage it properly to force Olympic sponsors to be more accountable respective of athletes and Host communities, which means it will be up to London 2012 to push it over the edge. Social media was almost sophisticated enough in 2008, but the secret partnership between the IOC and communist China regarding mainstream news media caught activists off guard.
The biggest mistake 2010 Vancouver made was to allow, once again, local mainstream news media to partner with the IOC. It should be illegal for an advertiser to have so much economic influence over local newspapers and television, especially when such a large part of the community trusts and mistakenly believes news media to be non partisan. Surprisingly, self titled social media experts in Vancouver don’t see bias as a problem, at least not enough to challenge the conflict of interest relationship. Many were too busy trying to figure out how they could personally benefit from the Olympics instead of helping to improve the system. They literally helped local newspapers sell out our community.
Anti-Olympic activists too were actually more concerned about seeing their names in local newspapers, which basically is a tempest in a teapot from the perspective of Olympic sponsors like McDonalds or GE, than they were about engaging the IOC on a global platform.
Olympic sponsors like Coca-Cola are not intimidated in the least by local complaints in a Host community, but they will however think much differently when complaints from Vancouver of IOC abuse ricochet around the world to future Olympic regions like London, Sochi and Rio. If the IOC can’t attract sponsors they will be forced to treat athletes and Host communities with more respect, or they will go bankrupt. Follow the money.
For new media Olympic activists to succeed they must first address the issue of the IOC partnering with local mainstream news media in Host regions. If this incestuous relationship is undermined, or ideally prohibited, the IOC’s mouthpiece is in effect gagged and a more truthful, realistic message to the community can be more easily distributed. When the IOC no longer controls the message Olympic sponsors will very seriously question whether they can risk associating their brands with an event that has a long history of harming Host communities. At the end of the day it won’t be the IOC that will take the direct hit, it will be companies like Coca-Cola. It’s not a coincidence that four TOPs Olympics sponsor bailed out last year. Kodak, Lenovo, Manulife Financial, and Johnson & Johnson all said adios to the IOC, a record number in all of Olympic history, and all but J&J did so well before the recession was an issue.
One small company in Vancouver that was bullied mercilessly by the IOC, but stood their ground was the Olympia restaurant on Denman. Their story is groundbreaking. I worked with them from the very beginning and used new media strategies to bring their fight with the IOC to a world stage. This little restaurant is a perfect example of the impact new media has on an Olympic region and the IOC.
Here’s their story
http://www.998denman.com/Page2.html
And here’s what Vancouverites think about the IOC respective of the restaurant.
http://www.olyblog.com/f/09/998Denman.shtml
Social media represents the new face of Olympic activism where the mantra is FIX IT! Instead of KILL IT!
Cheers,
Maurice Cardinal
Editor: http://www.OlyBLOG.com
Author: http://www.LeverageOlympicMomentum.com