The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) went back to basics for its new branding. It also came back to Vancouver for the design.
Executive director of brand marketing Dennis Kim, who managed licensing and merchandising for VANOC, chose multitalented designer Ben Hulse to re-evaluate the COC look. Hulse worked under the late Leo Obstbaum and Ali Gardner (now the Vancouver Canucks’ vice-president of marketing) in Vancouver 2010’s creative services department and was credited with designing the official Olympic and Paralympic posters.
“We weren’t sure which way we were going to go, whether we were going to develop something new or be inspired by the research we did,” Hulse said. “We discovered how significant the maple leaf was. The use of the single maple leaf predates the Canadian flag by 60 years.”
He added that the burning cauldron/maple leaf combination introduced before the Salt Lake 2002 Olympics, was “over-communicating.”
So a mark reminiscent of the Montreal 1976 era, a red maple leaf above the Olympic rings inside an ovular border representing a running or speed-skating track, was launched June 6 when Marketing magazine hosted a sports marketing conference in Toronto.
“It wasn’t necessarily that we wanted to do a retro mark or speak to a specific era,” Hulse said. “It was looking to communicate in the simplest, most pure form.”
Hulse was assisted by Greg Durrell, Adam Bognar and Andrew Simpson on the project and directed a rebranding video that appeared on a COC microsite.
The Vancouver Canucks Stanley Cup run brought back memories of the 2010 Winter Olympics on downtown streets and in its hotels.
The Sutton Place scored when the NHL was shooting in the second round for rooms in case the Stanley Cup Final came to Vancouver.
“We were lucky enough to offer one of the largest blocks for the NHL, making us the headquarters hotel,” said Sutton Place director of sales and marketing Kyle Matheson.
Matheson said 125 to 150 people – mainly media – stayed at the 561-room Sutton when the series with the Boston Bruins opened here. The hotel was festooned with NHL branding and there was even an appearance by Vancouver’s Green Men for interviews with visiting reporters.
“I’d rather it was Canucks in four,” Matheson said, “but from a business perspective, happy to have game five.”
Before the Stanley Cup Final started, Canucks’ general manager Mike Gillis told reporters that the location of the club’s farm team next season would be solved in a few weeks.
Gillis even suggested the Canucks could be owners of their minor-league affiliate.
The Manitoba Moose are headed to St. John’s, Newfoundland, with players from Winnipeg’s new NHL franchise, instead of Canucks prospects. If Canucks Sports and Entertainment is in the market to buy a team, wouldn’t the Abbotsford Heat be the most logical target?
The Canucks’ ownership is too savvy to simply buy a team and let it become a money pit. A farm team in the Fraser Valley would be a certain revenue generator.
NBC agreed June 7 to pay the International Olympic Committee (IOC) $4.382 billion to broadcast the Olympics through 2020. The Peacock network, now owned by Comcast, did the four-Games deal despite not knowing who will host in 2018 or 2020. The IOC will decide in Durban, South Africa, on July 6 whether PyeongChang, South Korea, Annecy, France, or Munich, Germany, hosts winter 2018.
The broadcast bidding was delayed because of the troubled global economy. Comcast signed a 10-year, $2 billion deal for National Hockey League rights in April, so the league and its players’ association will be compelled to pause the regular season for Sochi 2014 and wherever the Winter Games are in 2018.
Where does that leave the Canadian rights?
“There is no set date,” said CTV Olympics spokeswoman Andrea Goldstein. “We await further direction from the IOC on bid timing for the Canadian market?”
twitter.com/bobmackin