Torched.

Today at about 4.35pm, the Olympic torch came by the school where both Megan and I work. At about 4.15pm I made my way out towards the street, which even by this time was a sea of red and white. There was a plethera of hats, shirts, flags, noisemakers, and, of course, gloves, all of which stood out in patriotic excitement. People stood two, or even three, deep on the sidewalk, struggling for an unadulterated view of that white torch.

I stood with my wife and our friends as all around us the kids I see everyday bounced around with uncontrollable excitement and anticipation. It truly was hard not to be drawn in. All around there were smiles and squeals of laughter as we all waited together to catch a glimpse of the glowing flame. Part of me thought: there is something really neat that happens when we all gather with a common purpose. When we allow that guarded side of us to be let free and to express what it is we are truly thinking about – that unabashed joy and yearning.

That was of course, until I saw the large RBC and Coca-Cola trucks begin to make their way up the street. They played upbeat music and shouted through megaphones at the crowd, trying to stoke the fires of emotion that had already begun to show, and reading the name “Richmond” from a clipboard when they realized they didn’t actually know the city through which they were travelling.

In that moment I was suddenly reminded of the corporate machine that has become the Olympic Games and the false sense of connection that exists between big business and the average citizen. I was reminded that the essence of their involvement centered on the money that was to be made, and not on the health and well-being of each individual in attendance.

But back to that idea of being unified in a common goal. In feeling free to let our true-selves and emotions show. Isn’t that what church is supposed to be about? Aren’t we supposed to share in seeking to glorify God and strive for honesty with one another as we attempt to make sense of our relationship with God?

I guess I felt as though I caught a glimpse of what could be. Of what could happen if we were willing to be wholly authentic. I hope that at the very least, I am able to do that myself one day.

If you have read anything I have posted here in the last year, you know my issues with the Olympic Games. I think what I am trying to articulate is the fact that there are still elements of God’s truth in the midst of what seems to be a corrupt and greedy man-made creation.

Dumbed Down…

I had a prof ask me once if I had ever considered being more intentional with my writing. As in, would I ever consider writing a book. I answered that I did truly enjoy writing because it was something that came much easier to me than speaking. In writing I have opportunity to reflect, to organize, to edit, to rephrase. When I speak, it feels as though I can’t really put all the thoughts of my head into a coherent sentences and phrases. I feel as though I dance around the issue without ever really getting to it. I think the line “all the thoughts of my head” is key here as most of the time I feel as though there are about a million different things going on at one. To suddenly have to categorize and prioritize in order to clearly articulate them is something I find difficult.

Writing allows me to work more intentionaly through the chaos and arrive at a much more defined and succinct line of thinking. Well maybe not succinct…

It’s been almost a year since I graduated and consequently it feels as though it’s been about a year since I have spent any intentional time thinking and writing. While at school it feels as though your mind is revolving door through which many writers, thinkers, philosophers and teachers pass. A door that in reality fails at the task of being a door because there is no time for it to shut. There’s always that next paper, that next book, that next presentation. Perhaps after three consecutive years of being open I finally tired.

That is, I think, until now. I began a new job this year. It is a job that, at times, allows me some freedom to think and reflect. I also recently began a book that I purchased last year and was supposed to start this fall, but upon whose pages I never glanced until this past week. I’m not sure what prompted it. Maybe because it was the fact that I had more time to think, or I had less information constantly bombarding me.

Suffice to say, I think a combination of the book I am reading, and the opportunity for reflection has inspired me to begin writing more. Really that was the intention behind the creation of this blog in the first place. Hopefully I can continue on the course I have set.

This keeps getting better…

Librarians Told to Stand on Guard for 2010 Sponsors

‘If you are planning a kids’ event… approach McDonald’s and not another well-known fast-food outlet,’ instructs memo.

By Geoff Dembicki, Today, TheTyee.ca

Not a sponsor? Book ‘em.

Librarians are being asked to help police kids’ events and other gatherings on their premises to make sure the brands of corporations like Coke and McDonald’s get exclusive play during the 2010 Olympics.

An internal memo obtained by The Tyee advises Vancouver Public Library branches to protect Olympic sponsors.

“Do not have Pepsi or Dairy Queen sponsor your event,” read guidelines sent to VPL branch heads and supervisory staff last fall. “Coke and McDonald’s are the Olympic sponsors. If you are planning a kids’ event and approaching sponsors, approach McDonald’s and not another well-known fast-food outlet.”

‘Do’s and Don’ts’

With less than a month until Vancouver’s Games, local branches may decide to join the excitement. They might plan an event linked to the torch relay. Or organize a community celebration.

Just in case, VPL manager of marketing and communications Jean Kavanagh came up with an extensive list of “Do’s and Don’ts.” It was sent out sometime last October or November, she said.

“As the Games get close it’s kind of a reminder to people as they’re doing events of some things to keep in mind,” she told The Tyee Monday.

The guidelines apply mainly to highly visible gatherings with 30 or more people. Branches are advised to “ensure all equipment/goods meets VANOC’s sponsorship brand requirements for things like food, clothing, merchandise.”

The rules are very specific. It’s fine if a Telus employee agrees to be a speaker at a library-organized event. But staff can’t forget Bell is the official sponsor. They should make sure the guest removes his or her Telus jacket, the memo advises.

Tape over other labels

The same care must be taken for audio-visual equipment. The branch should try to get devices made by official sponsor Panasonic. Should staff only be able to find Sony equipment, the solution is simple.

“I would get some tape and put it over the ‘Sony,’” Kavanagh said. “Just a little piece of tape.”

Other rules help solve potential sponsor dilemmas. “If you are approaching businesses in your area for support and there is a Rona and Home Depot, go to Rona. If there’s only a Home Depot don’t approach them as Rona is the official sponsor. Try other small businesses,” the memo reads.

As The Tyee reported last week, corporate sponsorship is a fundamental reality of the Olympics. Multinational firms spend tens of millions of dollars to market themselves through the Games. 
Domestic and international sponsorship revenue pays for more than half of VANOC’s $1.75 billion operating budget.

When Vancouver won the Games in 2003, it signed agreements with the International Olympic Committee to bolster sponsor rights.

In 2007, the federal government gave VANOC “considerable powers” to protect the Games brand. Local signage legislation led to legal action against the city of Vancouver last fall.

‘VANOC did not ask us to do this’

“The Library is a City department and we need to ensure our activities follow the correct protocols as the Host City,” Kavanagh wrote in an email Monday morning.

She denied receiving direction from Olympics organizers when she created the VPL guidelines. “This has nothing to do with VANOC,” she said later in an interview. “VANOC did not ask us to do this.”

Same goes for the city, she added. Kavanagh maintained she relied on her own knowledge and initiative.

“People are just glad to have good information,” she said. “You don’t want to plan something if there’s going to be a major problem.”

The Tyee asked if major problems — for example, a Pepsi-sponsored library event — would have major consequences.

“You’re fishing around for something that’s not there,” she replied. “We have a very good relationship with VANOC.”

City of Vancouver spokesperson Lesli Boldt said she hasn’t seen the memo. “I don’t think the city advised the library. They have their own sponsorship policy,” she said.

Calls to Olympics organizers were not returned by posting time.

The Olympic Corporate Machine…

Original post here.

From Olympic Ideals to Corporate Blitz: A Brief History

How business saved the Games by turning them into a tightly controlled, billion dollar advertisement.

By Geoff Dembicki, Today, TheTyee.ca

On June 16, 2006, 1,000 Dutch soccer fans were forced to strip to their underwear in Stuttgart, Germany. They’d waited in 25 minute lines, shuffling step by step towards the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion. At the door, stern FIFA World Cup officials ordered them to remove their bright orange lederhosen.One Dutch man threw his over a fence. A stadium steward approached his waiting friends, likely tossing the confiscated pants into a rubbish-filled storage bin with all the others. Bare-legged Dutch fans ambled to their seats, leg hairs bristling from the draft.

Absurd? Not in the bloodied-nose arena of international sports marketing, where no punches are held and most are below the belt. FIFA was merely protecting the $1.1 billion investment of official World Cup sponsor Budweiser. Dutch brewery Bavaria had circulated thousands of branded orange trousers to beer-loving soccer fans.

Despite the best efforts of FIFA’s pants-police, Budweiser’s dollar signs couldn’t match the simple ingenuity of its rival. Worldwide media exposure meant everyone was talking about Bavaria’s crazy stunt. And FIFA and its sponsors looked profoundly uncool.

Now jump three years into the future. In October 2009, two well-known Olympics critics sued the city of Vancouver. New bylaws, passed partly to protect the rights of official 2010 Winter Games sponsors, would trample local civil liberties, the pair believed.

It sounds like a bad joke: What do bare Dutch legs and litigious activists have in common? A lot, as it turns out.

Both crown a story as old as the modern Olympics. A tale of financial need and corporate hunger, culminating in crisis in the late 1970s. With the very future of the Olympics movement at stake, a logo-covered phoenix took flight. Its journey is far from over.

This February, get ready for a 21st century Games, where the big spending battles of corporate titans could overshadow the rivalries of the ice rink and ski slope. And the supreme prize is the eyes, minds and ultimately, pocketbooks of the entire world.

Start of a movement

It wasn’t always like this. The modern Olympics began as the idealistic vision of a romantic dreamer. His name was Pierre de Coubertin. The moustachioed French aristocrat grew up during his country’s humiliating defeat in the 1870-1 Franco-Prussian war.

He spent most of his young adult years campaigning for better physical education. Sports could instill positive values, he believed. And possibly prepare a new generation of French youth for combat.

Coubertin adored ancient Greece. There had been modest Olympics revivals before him. None had the benefit of his superb political connections. He proposed an international celebration of youth, culture, tolerance and peace. It was a convincing sell in a tumultuous era.

Athens was the test run. Its 1896 Olympics were largely funded by the private donations of patriotic Greek businessman scattered across the planet. At least 60,000 spectators and dignitaries attended. By all accounts, the festival was a complete success. Yet Coubertin’s fledgling International Olympic Committee (IOC) soon ran into a recurring problem: Who would pay for future Games?

The world of big business showed little interest. For instance, readers of the official race programme at London’s 1908 Games would have perused full-page advertisements for Wawkphar’s Antiseptic Military Foot Powder and Vaughton’s Medal and Badge Makers.

Each new Olympics begat more athletes, dignitaries and spectators. Costs got higher and riskier. The 1920 Antwerp Games handed a 625,000 franc deficit to its Belgium hosts. Four years later, the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, became the financial equivalent of a 30-skier pile-up, leaving organizers two million francs in debt.

Still, cities continued to host. “I don’t think the expectation was there in terms of profit,” said Stephen Wenn, co-author of Selling the Five Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Rise of Olympic Commercialism. “But whether you’re talking the 1900s or 21st century, you’re always going to find civic leaders who see these as something beneficial for their city — not to mention their own reputation.”

Coubertin died in 1937. His heart was buried at the ancient ruins of Olympia, according to orders in his will. The movement he’d fathered was growing fast, but headed for an identity crisis. No one would exemplify it better than a millionaire businessman from Chicago named Avery Brundage.

Crusade against commercialism

Brundage’s own dream of Olympic gold dream died at the 1912 Stockholm Games, where he competed and finished well back in the pentathlon and decathlon. The failures haunted him as he went on to amass a fortune in the world of heavy construction. When he eventually did return to the world of athletics, it was in the role of administrator. By 1938, Brundage was head of the United States Olympic Association (USOA).

Brundage began a protracted crusade against Helms Bakeries that year. The Californian company sold lucrative “Olympic Bread” branded with the five-rings logo. It’d registered the word “Olympic” and all accompanying insignia in nearly every U.S. state. Essentially, a private company had scooped the USOA.

Brundage huffed and fumed. There was little else he could do. “You cannot imagine how many attempts there are to capitalize on the Olympic Games and the difficulty we have in preventing promoters to use the Olympic Movement for their own personal gain,” he wrote to a colleague in 1938.

The most frustrating part was Helms Bakeries had every legal right on its side. None of the threatening letters Brundage wrote for 12 years could change that. Yet Helms Bakeries did let go of control of the Olympic brand in 1950. As a big supporter of American athletes, the company probably tired of so much ill will. Federal legislation soon granted the USOA wide jurisdiction over Olympics trademarks. It was official recognition of an obvious fact: the five rings had become a marketing goldmine.

That worried Brundage. He feared corporate dollars would destroy the ideals at the heart of the movement — or at least, his version of them. He adhered to an unyielding belief in amateurism, the concept that athletes shouldn’t be paid professionals.

Brundage assumed the IOC presidency in 1952. He was stubborn and dictatorial. International controversy followed his decision to ban Austrian skier Karl Schranz from the 1972 Winter Olympics for receiving sponsorship dollars. There were many like it.

“Let’s be blunt,” said David Wallechinsky, vice-president of the International Society of Olympic Historians. “He was quite a tyrant. He was a very wealthy man who had no tolerance for athletes trying to make money.”

It wasn’t just athletes. With the first major television rights deals and the advent of satellite technology in the early 1960s, a perpetually broke IOC was suddenly awestruck by wealth.

Brundage could see the huge benefits of TV coverage, as marketing tool and revenue stream. It still made him uneasy. “I’m not sure we should ever get into [the TV] business,” he declared in 1955. “But on the other hand certainly we should not give millions of dollars away.”

Financial disasters and terrorist attacks

The value of TV rights deals shot skyward. The 1960 Squaw Valley, U.S.A. Winter Games brought US$50,000. Four years later, Innsbruck, Austria Olympics organizers sold rights worth US$936,667. Televised broadcasts let millions identify with the universal ideals and ancient symbolism at the heart of the Olympic movement.

That kind of exposure helped create the perfect consumer, ready to buy anything linked to the Games. Indeed, organizers at Tokyo’s 1964 Olympics licensed official cigarettes with a five-ring logo stamped on every package.

Yet greater interest meant bigger spectacles. And new revenue streams couldn’t necessarily pay the bills. In 1970, financial worries prompted Colorado voters to reject Denver’s successful bid to host the 1976 Games. A flustered IOC pleaded with fourth-ranked bidder Whistler to take over. The resort didn’t want them either. They were finally given to Innsbruck, three years later.

More crises followed. In 1972, Palestinian radicals in black track suits took 11 Israeli athletes hostage. Sniper bullets, machinegun rounds and grenade explosions left 17 dead, forever linking the Munich Games to politically-motivated violence. Brundage stepped down as IOC president that year.

Montreal’s 1976 Games were no less calamitous. Mayor Jean Drapeau famously promised the spectacle “can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby.” He was only half right. Montreal finally settled its $1.5 billion tab in 2006.

Only months before the 1980 Moscow Games, Soviet tanks ploughed into Afghanistan. U.S. President Jimmy Carter retaliated with a full American boycott, the largest in Olympics history.

“A lot of people were questioning the Olympic movement,” Wenn said. “There was a chill in municipal councils all around the world — whether there was any viable reason for going ahead with the Games.”

Was Coubertin’s movement in jeopardy? Would the flaming ideals of the five-rings be snuffed out by warring political ideologies and financial fears?

First commercial Olympics

When Los Angeles won its bid to host the 1984 Summer Olympics, nobody was surprised. It was the only serious contender. Peter Ueberroth, head of the Los Angeles organizing committee, told a reluctant city council not to worry. He was going to raise all the operating money himself.

At Montreal’s 1976 Olympics, organizers had sold sponsorship rights to anyone who asked. The result was 628 “official” partners clamouring for attention at the least exclusive party in town.

Ueberroth in effect kicked out the riffraff. He sold sponsorship rights to a small cadre of multinational corporations. Everybody won. Companies such as Converse projected their brands through the global Olympics lens. Organizers were left with a record US$225 million surplus. Even a Soviet boycott went largely unnoticed.

The IOC launched TOP, its worldwide sponsorship program, the next year. Nine corporations paid huge sums for global marketing rights. It was wild success. The first four years alone generated revenues of US$96 million. (The program brought US$866 million in 2005-08.)

It appeared the financial disaster of Montreal was largely forgotten. Six cities jostled to host the 1992 Summer Olympics. Five battled for the next. “Once Peter Ueberroth demonstrated a way to carry off the enterprise on the backs of the private sector, there was renewed interest,” Wenn said.

But the model was vulnerable. Converse had paid millions to partner with the 1984 Olympics. Its rival Nike plastered huge murals of swoosh-wearing athletes all over Los Angeles. Forty-two per cent of Americans confused Nike as an official partner.

“If you sponsor a big [sporting event], people will ultimately buy more of your products,” said Simon Chadwick, founder and director of the Centre for the International Business of Sport at Coventry University. “Ambush marketing is about creating a misperception in the minds of consumers.”

Nike’s brazen murals were only the beginning. Each Games saw bigger and more sophisticated branding battles. When Visa sponsored the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, American Express retaliated with a simple slogan: “You don’t need a Visa to visit Spain.” Host cities — and countries — were becoming corporate war zones.

For the Olympics movement, the stakes were high. Unregulated ambush campaigns threatened a now vital revenue base. Why would sponsors invest tens of millions of dollars when their rivals could win the same market exposure for way less?

‘Draconian’ measures

The IOC wasn’t the only one worried. In 1996, Nike ambushed the UEFA European Football Championship, snatching all outdoor ad space in and around London’s Wembley Park tube station. Official sponsor Umbro was incensed.

Yet maybe Nike was on to something. UEFA decided to rent every advertising property within a one to three kilometre radius of soccer venues at future competitions. With the IOC’s urging, local Olympics committees began to go even further. Organizers of the 2004 Athens Games literally reserved every outdoor ad space in the city. The billboards they couldn’t sell sat blank.

The Vancouver 2010 organizing committee (VANOC) spent $38 million to give official partners the same protection, snapping up every outdoor ad property in the Lower Mainland. (Selling the inventory has been tough. And organizers freely admit they probably won’t unload it all).

Over the past decade, ad monopolies have been fortified with tougher trademark legislation. Legal guarantees are now a vital part of any successful Games bid.

“The Olympic Symbol and the terms ‘Olympic’ and ‘Olympiad’ and the Olympic motto” must be defended, the Manual for Candidate Cities for the XXI Olympic Winter Games 2010 stated. All bidders promised to “obtain from their government and/or their competent national authorities, adequate and continuing legal protection to the satisfaction of the IOC.”

VANOC gained “considerable powers” from legislation passed by the Canadian government in 2007. Organizers could now seek lightning-fast court injunctions against unauthorized attempts to profit off the Olympic brand. For instance, a local jewellery store holding an “Olympics sale.”

Did recent Vancouver bylaws go too far? Anti-Games activists Chris Shaw and Alissa Westergard-Thorpe sued the city in Oct. 2009. Temporary new rules imposed maximum $10,000 fines for unauthorized signs during the Games. The activists saw a blatant attack on their right to protest.

Vancouver relented in late November. The city promised to clearly distinguish between political and commercial signs. Yet most temporary powers remain. If someone were to hang a Pepsi banner from their balcony, bylaw officers could legally enter the residence within 24 hours to remove it. (The same rules apply to signs of official sponsors.)

During the 2010 Games, a team of 60 city inspectors will patrol Olympics corridors, venue zones and local celebration sites. VANOC is deploying about nine personnel to keep venues commercial-free. Their mandate could include taping over “blatant” logos on the shoes of volunteers.

The team will also monitor the city. “We’ll hop on the Skytrain and ride out to Metrotown mall and go out around Vancouver to see how the brand is being used,” said Bill Cooper, VANOC’s director of commercial rights management.

It’s worth mentioning domestic and international sponsorship revenue pays for about $1 billion of VANOC’s $1.75 billion operating budget. Also notable are the billions of provincial and federal dollars necessary to widen the Sea-to-Sky highway, tunnel a new rapid transit line, construct the official media centre and secure the Games.

The United Kingdom just passed legislation protecting official sponsors during London’s 2012 Olympics. And South Africa has done the same for the 2010 World Cup. Chadwick sees an escalating trend with some troubling implications.

“Some of the legal rights it gives the authorities are becoming increasingly draconian,” he said. “So inevitably there has been a natural rise in concerns about people’s civil liberties.”

Are crackdowns effective?

Let’s return to Germany’s 2006 World Cup, home of the rubbish bins overflowing with bright orange lederhosen. Bavaria’s ambush became one of the most famous of all time. Nike’s innovative use of social media was no less effective.

In the months leading up to the World Cup, the apparel giant told people to video themselves juggling a soccer ball. The only rule was the ball had to enter from the left of the screen, and leave on the right.

Thousands of amateur directors uploaded content to Nike’s official site. The company spliced the best clips. A soccer ball got bounced, kicked and head-butted across entire continents.

“This became a real phenomenon, particularly in Europe,” Chadwick said. “In the end, more people were talking about Nike in 2006 than Adidas, even though Adidas was the official sponsor.”

And there’s the problem, according to Chadwick. New rules to control ambush marketing are getting stricter all the time. But cities, event organizers and the international committees that direct them may be in a perpetual game of catch-up.

Last December saw Lululemon and Pepsi launch inventive ambush-style campaigns.

The same month, Vancouver police seized a million dollars worth of illegal goods that brazenly displayed the Olympics logo without official permission. The product? More than 100,000 ecstasy pills.

Who knows what branding battles await Vancouver next month?

And so it begins.

One of my main concerns as we draw closer to the beginning of the Olympic Games in Vancouver is the treatment of the over 2000 homeless in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. While reports have surfaced predicting the eventual “clean-up” of the homeless from the streets for the upcoming games, none have contained much tangible legislation. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of that particular pattern. The following comes from a Tyee article:

Olympics bylaws could ‘clobber’ the homeless: Cadman

New changes to Vancouver’s Olympics bylaws could be used to clear homeless people from the Downtown Eastside, city councillor David Cadman worries.

“Obviously this is one of the poorest areas in town,” he told council. “My fear is that this is going to be an ability to harass people and remove them.”

City council debated new amendments to its contentious Olympics bylaws today. The main thrust of the changes is to make a clear distinction between commercial and political speech.

But they also give the city greater leeway to write $250 tickets for offences such as street vending. Normally, violators receive a notice to appear in court and fines are issued at a judge’s discretion.

The powers are temporary measures that apply throughout the city. They run from Feb. 6 to March 21.

Cadman was concerned changes could be used to “clobber” homeless street vendors in order to force them from public view.

“We have no intention of using this opportunity to so-called ‘cleanup’ the Downtown Eastside,” City Manager Penny Ballem said. “We’re going to use this judiciously.”

B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director David Eby had some doubts.

“The intentions are always good,” he said. “It’s the implementation that can be problematic.”

Bylaw enforcement is a sensitive issue in the Downtown Eastside. Critics charge Vancouver police with a “ticketing blitz” to clear the streets last winter. Officers handed out hundreds of fines for minor infractions such as jaywalking.

Geoff Dembicki reports for the Tyee.

New Tunes…

Just click the following link to hear a couple of new Christmas recordings for this year.

http://virb.com/mikesimpson

Recording Update:

Tonight Dan and I hung out in the barn working on the final mixes and mastering the tracks. Look for some links to new Christmas music on December 1st!

New Recordings Coming Soon!

Over the last few years a tradition of sorts has evolved between several of my friends and I. Tucked away in the farmlands of Ladner, a recording studio has been constructed. Come November a handful of us make our way up the steps of the white barn and spend a few days recording songs for Christmas. This year has seen the production of some exciting new songs, and even a music video or two! We are aiming for a tentative release date of December 1st! These songs will be posted online and made available for free download! I will keep you updated.

Church.

Over the last several years I have spent a lot of time in church.

Sometimes church is hard.

Sometimes church disappoints.

Sometimes church feels hopeless.

Sometimes you get the opportunity to be part of a community during a service that expresses authenticty and a real desire to engage with God.

Sometimes you are moved and surprised by the Spirit at the most unlikely of times.

Sometimes you leave with a feeling that you have just been a part of something greater than yourself.

Sometimes those instances in which church is hard all seem worth it.

B.C.’s New Class War?

While I have never been very trusting of the NDP or Carole James, she recently unrolled a proposed NDP policy before the Union of BC Municipalities that is worth a comment.

While speaking in front of municipal and provincial business leaders, James asserted a planned corporate tax cut, which equates to about $150 million yearly, should instead go towards funding environmental and public transportation projects.

Bill Tieleman, who appears on AM980 and regularly writes for the Tyee wrote the following article in response the stir caused by James’ call to cancel this corporate tax cut. Click the link below:

“Us versus Them”