Heavy-handed zeal - Games organisers enforce ridiculous branding restrictions

LONDON (AP)

Perhaps we should have seen this coming. Back in 2007, a butcher at the Fantastic Sausage Factory in the quaint English county of Dorset was told to remove a window sign depicting sausage meat twisted into the shape of the five Olympic rings.

And last year, competitors in a baking contest in bucolic Shropshire were warned by Games organisers to drop plans to place Olympic-themed marzipan figurines atop their cakes.

But those were merely preliminary skirmishes in a multibillion-dollar sponsorship battle that has drawn charges that London organisers have been heavy-handed, and just plain stupid, in their zealous enforcement of branding restrictions.

"The rules were intended to stop the big brands from getting a free ride on the Olympic goodwill," said Michael Payne, a former IOC marketing director, who now works as a consultant.

"They were never designed nor intended to suffocate the genuine local community spirit, the florist putting up a bouquet of flowers, or the butcher doing a sign with Olympic rings."

He blamed London organisers for creating outrage that will only boomerang on the very sponsors they seek to protect.

"You want to be balanced and intelligent ... but the agenda got hijacked by the lawyers who were painting everything as black and white, when it needed to be applied in shades of gray."

Private Eye, Britain's spoof political magazine, captured the organisers' somewhat maniacal focus on brand protection best with its cover this week, which depicted two machine-gun wielding policemen outside Olympic Stadium warning a fan to "put down the Pepsi can and no one will get hurt".

As you can probably guess, Coke is the official soft drink of the games.

Just a sampling of the more bizarre examples from Olympic venues this week.