With less than 100 days to go til the Olympics officially kick off here in Vancouver and the Torch Relay finally underway, there have been a lot of Olympic-themed campaigns that have started around the Internets and beyond.
The Canadian Olympic Committee launched their "Paint the Town Red" program. If you need ideas on how you, your organization or your town can Paint the Town Red, you can download their idea booklet (pdf). Some of my favourite suggestions (tongue only occasionally in cheek here):
- Hang strings of red Christmas lights from your porch or balcony (note to self: stock up on red lights - these will go fast at Canadian Tire, I bet)
- Have a ‘wear red to work’ day, with roving facepainters (the idea of roving facepainters scares me - yet, it's the kind of thing I would like to do)
- Bake red cookies and give them out at your community centre, senior centre or sports club
- Create a ritual every time a Canadian athlete wins a medal eg. put another Canadian flag up in the lobby (or eat another red cookie)
- Sign all correspondence in red ink (I feel like there are some weird legal ramifications to this - but if I change my email font to red, you'll know why)
- Free parking for customers in red cars (this one is pretty clever)
- Switch the company logo to red (for celebration days or opening ceremony) [the parenthesis on this were actually in the booklet - I'm trying to imagine the argument between the creatives and the brand police on this one "Oo .. have people change their logo" "OMG - you can't change the LOGO" "Well, what if they did it just for the opening ceremonies?" "Oh, ok then".]
The COC also created this facebook app - PodiumPals - where you can stick your face on different cartoon sports representations and use the pic as a profile app.
Disclosure: the COC's PR firm sent me a "Paint the Town Red" paint can kit as part of the launch of this program.
And as you could expect, National Olympic Partners are also starting to launch their promotions. Petro-Canada has re-launched their iwilldreambig.ca site. It now includes a very cool "Longest Wave in the World" - you can take a series of 5 shots with your webcam, mimicking you doing the wave, and then upload them. The website animates them and joins your pic in a wave across Canada. It's a neat idea.
As part of the iwilldreambig relaunch, LintBucket Media (my company) worked with Petro-Canada on a blog to promote their Canadian Athlete Family Program (CAFP). The CAFP takes care of two family members of Canadian Olympic Athletes who are competing at the Vancouver 2010 Games. Once they arrive in Vancouver, Petro-Canada's CAFP houses them, gives them great swag, gets them tickets to their athlete's competition, transports them to the competition and provides other support during their stay.
Finally, my own personal Olympic fever stems from my recently caught pin obsession. Olympic pins. This month is my birthday and Rosemary kicked off my birthday month celebration with these four pins.
Cute, huh? (Mukmuk, with the foam finger, cracks me up every time I look at him.) And then I entered a pin contest on Twitter from Atos (an awesome "100 days to go" pin - and they are still doing the trivia if YOU want to enter) and then I entered another pin contest from Cold F/X and I read Andrea's 2010VanFan blog obsessively and have been entering her draws. Oh, AND I donated $20.10 to Molson's podium fund to get their pin. It's a sickness. But I can't stop. This is my pin collection goal.
So, if you have any Vancouver 2010 Olympic pins that you have kicking around that you don't really want, I know where they can find a good home :)