Aleem Khan

The lo­cal op­er­a­tions of at least four com­pa­nies have in­curred the wrath of the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee's (IOC) le­gal de­part­ment with their so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing. Dig­i­cel, Mario's Pizze­ria, Sport­World and Mas­ter­Card have caught the at­ten­tion of the IOC's le­gal de­part­ment for their "unau­tho­rized as­so­ci­a­tion" with the Lon­don 2012 Olympics, in­clud­ing through the use of the im­age of Olympic gold medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott. "The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent, Lar­ry Ro­many, and I were hauled be­fore the le­gal de­part­ment of the IOC, and 'dragged over the coals' re­gard­ing the am­bush mar­ket­ing tak­ing place in our ju­ris­dic­tion," TTOC Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Bri­an Lewis said on Tues­day. He said he fears that Trinidad and To­ba­go is earn­ing a "rep­u­ta­tion with the IOC to be a ter­ri­to­ry that is an am­bush-mar­ket­ing free-for-all" thanks to the of­fend­ing com­pa­nies. In its Bye Law to Rules 7-14, the Olympic Char­ter says: "Each NOC (Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee) is re­spon­si­ble to the IOC for the ob­ser­vance, in its coun­try, of Rules 7-14 and BLR 7-14. It shall take steps to pro­hib­it any use of any Olympic prop­er­ties which would be con­trary to such Rules or their Bye-laws. It shall al­so en­deav­our to ob­tain, for the ben­e­fit of the IOC, pro­tec­tion of the Olympic prop­er­ties of the IOC."

In its Brand Pro­tec­tion Guide­lines, the IOC de­fined am­bush mar­ket­ing: "Al­so known as par­a­sitic or guer­ril­la mar­ket­ing, am­bush mar­ket­ing de­scribes a busi­ness' at­tempts to at­tach it­self to a ma­jor sports event with­out pay­ing spon­sor­ship fees. As a re­sult, the busi­ness gains the ben­e­fits of be­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with the good­will and pub­lic ex­cite­ment around the event for free. This dam­ages the in­vest­ment of gen­uine spon­sors, and risks the or­gan­is­er's abil­i­ty to fund the event." In an­oth­er doc­u­ment, the Rule 40 Guide­lines, the IOC ex­press­ly pro­hibits, "Ref­er­ences to Par­tic­i­pants (in­clud­ing use of their im­age) on cor­po­rate web­sites (in­clud­ing so­cial net­work­ing sites and oth­er so­cial me­dia plat­forms) which ap­pear on the com­pa­ny's home page or equiv­a­lent (in­clud­ing, for ex­am­ple, a land­ing page or front page of Face­book); or di­rect­ly pro­mote or en­dorse a prod­uct (but note the deemed con­sent for use in cat­a­logues be­low); or are not sim­ply in the con­text of fac­tu­al­ly de­scrib­ing the com­pa­ny's sup­port of the ath­lete (or sport) and/or in­clud­ed with­in an archived news item or blog – the ref­er­ences are used in a more pro­mo­tion­al con­text." Ini­tial­ly, Lewis would not spec­i­fy which com­pa­nies made the "unau­tho­rized as­so­ci­a­tion" with the Lon­don 2012 Olympics, but when asked specif­i­cal­ly about Mario's Pizze­ria, he con­firmed that it was "not Mario's alone" and de­nounced that the am­bush mar­ket­ing "is still tak­ing place" on Face­book and oth­er so­cial me­dia.

The Busi­ness Guardian learnt that let­ters from the TTOC on be­half of IOC's le­gal de­part­ment have been sent to the of­fend­ing com­pa­nies ask­ing them to im­me­di­ate­ly cease and de­sist. Screen shots of Dig­i­cel's Face­book pages showed, up to press time on Tues­day (Au­gust 21), con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sages to, and ban­ners of Wal­cott, and oth­er Olympic ath­letes. Mario's took down its posts fol­low­ing Busi­ness Guardian en­quiries. Sport­world's Face­book page was tak­en of­fline on Tues­day but up to Mon­day screen shots showed the pho­tos of Wal­cott and oth­er Olympians still up. Mas­ter­Card was "dealt with di­rect­ly by the IOC," Lewis said. "We (TTOC) have been very clear, very co­op­er­a­tive with re­quests for per­mis­sion and or in­for­ma­tion," Lewis said. "There are a set of IOC guide­lines that we have to abide by. There are some con­straints. Where we may agree to al­low an as­so­ci­a­tion with the TTOC and TT Olympic Games rights, it can­not be ac­ti­vat­ed in a way that is of­fen­sive to the Olympic move­ment. It is about en­sur­ing every­one is play­ing by the rules. We are at­tempt­ing with the guid­ance of the IOC le­gal de­part­ment to bring clar­i­ty to the lo­cal mar­ket place in re­spect of the le­gal and con­trac­tu­al re­la­tion­ships sur­round­ing Olympic spon­sor­ship and au­tho­rised as­so­ci­a­tion. There are le­gal com­plex­i­ties as it re­lates to the IOC, TTOC, spon­sor and ath­letes' rights. Through open and trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion we are try­ing to guard against dis­putes."

Lewis said that pri­or to the Lon­don 2012 Olympics let­ters had been sent from the TTOC to all ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies, me­dia hous­es and oth­ers. In ad­di­tion, he said the TTOC is­sued press re­leas­es and took part in ra­dio shows to raise aware­ness. The Olympic rights are in­fringed when there is "unau­tho­rised as­so­ci­a­tion," Lewis said. He said this oc­curs when "an unau­tho­rised non-spon­sor in the course of trade, cre­ates an as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween their busi­ness goods and ser­vices and Lon­don 2012, the IOC or TTOC, and al­so, when a com­pa­ny us­es the as­so­ci­a­tion in any pro­mo­tion­al or com­mer­cial ap­pli­ca­tion, caus­ing con­fu­sion or mis­un­der­stand­ing, or be­ing mis­lead­ing as to the re­la­tion­ship with the Games. He said: "Unau­tho­rised use of the Games Marks are strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed. Ex­pres­sions and words that may be deemed to cre­ate an as­so­ci­a­tion for there to be an in­fringe­ment are: gold, sil­ver, bronze, medals, Lon­don, 2012, and Lon­don 2012 to name a few. The fun­da­men­tal le­gal is­sue is whether an as­so­ci­a­tion has been cre­at­ed with Lon­don 2012, the Games, IOC or TTOC." He said that "Rights of As­so­ci­a­tion" pro­vide of­fi­cial spon­sors with the ex­clu­sive right to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the Olympics, Lon­don 2012, IOC and TTOC.

Am­bush mar­ket­ing

He said that am­bush mar­ket­ing and unau­tho­rised ac­tiv­i­ties dam­age the ex­clu­sive rights of spon­sors, the IOC, and the TTOC. Am­bush mar­ket­ing in­volves a com­pa­ny try­ing to as­so­ciate it­self with a ma­jor sports event with­out pay­ing spon­sor­ship fees, when its com­peti­tors and oth­er third par­ties have paid for this ben­e­fit. "The chal­lenge with am­bush mar­keters is that they pig­gy­back on the in­creased aware­ness and ex­cite­ment and the feel good fac­tor of an event such as the Olympics with­out pay­ing for the right to so do," Lewis said.It is dis­ap­point­ing that such es­tab­lished T&T com­pa­nies with pos­i­tive brand im­ages would adopt such a de­lib­er­ate and in­ten­tion­al cam­paign, Lewis said. "They would not want any­one to breach their in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. Why do it to oth­ers?" he asked rhetor­i­cal­ly. "We have worked close­ly with the IOC le­gal de­part­ment in an ef­fort to en­sure that the IOC and TTOC in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights were pro­tect­ed. It is dis­ap­point­ing that Mario Piz­za would am­bush mar­ket," he said. Mario's own­er Richard Har­ford has not re­turned calls or emails from the Busi­ness Guardian on the is­sue.

Dig­i­cel re­sponds

Dig­i­cel Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Pen­ny Gomez said in an e-mailed re­sponse: "Hav­ing been alert­ed that a third par­ty op­er­a­tor had in­ad­ver­tent­ly as­so­ci­at­ed one of Dig­i­cel's one-off on­line pro­mo­tions in April to the Olympics, Dig­i­cel im­me­di­ate­ly act­ed, in­struct­ing the ven­dor to re­move any and all of­fend­ing el­e­ments. Dig­i­cel then went a step fur­ther and con­tact­ed the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) to ap­prise it of the sit­u­a­tion and was thanked by the IOC for tak­ing such im­me­di­ate and de­ci­sive ac­tion." Rais­ing aware­ness about the is­sue in 2004, George Bovell was the first Olympic ath­lete from Trinidad and To­ba­go to pro­hib­it, through his at­tor­neys, any unau­tho­rized use of his name or im­age fol­low­ing his first Olympic bronze medal in Athens, Greece. Lewis said: "Peo­ple will judge you by the com­pa­ny you keep. The Olympic move­ment can't have part­ner­ships with those who don't share our val­ues and ideals. The Olympic move­ment is not just about sell­ing the rights to use the lo­go, but rather the right to as­so­ciate with an ide­al, a pur­pose, a dream."