Olympic Marketing Notes: Apple Logo Covered At Media Center

In Atlanta, Jeff Schultz reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writer Michelle Hiskey returned to her laptop in the media center at the Turin Games on Saturday to find the Apple logo covered by black tape (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 2/13). Apple competitor Lenovo is a TOP sponsor (THE DAILY). In N.Y., Dellapina & Coffey note Olympics officials did not want the logo to “provide free advertising if caught on camera.” Also, Olympic employees asked reporters in the media centers, which were “far from the cameras’ sights,” to put away water bottles that were not from the company providing water for the Games (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 2/13).

UNDER THE INFLUENCE: George Hacker, Alcohol Policies Project Dir for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, called Anheuser-Busch’s sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic ski team “‘tone deaf,’ especially after [Bode Miller] said on ‘60 Minutes’ that he occasionally raced while under the influence of alcohol.” Hacker also noted A-B’s sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic snowboarding team. The average age of a snowboarder in the U.S. is 19.6, and among the U.S. team’s 16 members, six are under the legal drinking age (Andrew Adam Newman, N.Y. TIMES, 2/13).

BROUGHT TO YOU BY...: The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Thurow & Fatsis write Corporate America is “stretching its involvement in aiding U.S. athletes beyond the usual sponsorship contribution of money and advertising fame.” The U.S. luge team, “frustrated with having to shop for its steel sled runners in Austria, has turned to U.S. Steel Corp., which has taken up the challenge to concoct a better alloy compound.” Also, Hilton Hotels has enlisted a former NASA scientist to “redesign the rooms at training dorms to boost the athletes’ alertness and reaction time through improved sleep” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 2/13).