The Olympics are trying to do the impossible. Finding themselves mainly sponsored by companies that seem to go directly against the ethos of, well, sport - (four of the major backers are Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Cabury and Heineken, none of which exactly get brownie points for health) - they have now taken on the task of changing these companies, so that they are indeed ethical, healthy, and "holistic".
Under pressure from the Olympics committee, Coca-Cola last week started championing a project to involve atheletes in environmental issues, and McDonalds, with an apparently straight face, has opted to raise awareness about British farming.
Daryl Jelinek, Coca-Cola's London 2012 general manager spoke to the Financial Times (£) about its image change:
“It is about ‘calories in and calories out.’ ” Or, as he argued, it is fine to drink a can of Coke so long as it is balanced by some form of physical exercise afterwards.
Ah, so you can "off-set" a can of coke by running up some stairs afterwards? Who knew? Thanks Coca-Cola - you're a totally healthy product now.
But hey, these four companies are making the Olympics possible - so what are you gonna do? Here's Jeremy Hunt in the Financial Times (£):
“These sponsors, if you tot it up, they are paying for about half the cost of hosting the Olympics,” Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. “And you know, if they weren’t doing that then we would have to be doing it as taxpayers.
“And we can’t have it both ways – we have to recognise that actually they’re doing a great deal to ease the pain on us.”
As if to reflect the uneasiness of the compromise, the Olympics advertising campaign seems to be overtly making the best of a bad job - with the fairly tepid slogan "We all make the games". Rather like an atheist conference being sponsored by holywineonline.com, or the RSPCA taking money from Sarah Palin, there's only so many lines an advertising campaign can take. These include "Look, the money has to come from somewhere, guys, so let's just get on with it", "Eh, what are you gonna do?" and "We all make the games".
