At the Olympic Games here, you drink Coca-Cola beverages, eat McDonald's food, ride in Volkswagen sedans and watch events on giant Panasonic video screens.
Beijing organizers have gone to great lengths -- employing a dedicated staff armed with plenty of tape -- to ensure that companies providing otherwise important services but who aren't official sponsors don't upstage the companies that are. See photo.You also take elevators, are protected by fire alarms, cool down thanks to air conditioners, and wash your hands under faucets.
To ensure that only the companies that pay millions of dollars to be official Olympic sponsors enjoy the benefits of exposure in Olympic venues, organizers have covered the trademarks of nonsponsors with thousands of little swatches of tape.
In media centers, dormitories and arena bathrooms, pieces of tape cover logos of fire extinguishers, light switches, thermostats, bedroom night tables, soap dispensers and urinals. The Taiden Industrial translation headsets in a large conference room have had their logos covered, as have the American Standard faucets in the bathrooms nearby, and the ThyssenKrupp escalators down the hall.
Even the sign atop the InterContinental Beijing Beichen hotel, attached to the Main Press Center, has been obscured by an Olympic cloth wrap. InterContinental Hotels Group isn't an Olympic sponsor. Gary Rosen, a spokesman for Intercontinental, says the company doesn't mind complying with the brand restrictions because it had planned all along to formally open the hotel following completion of the Games.
The International Olympic Committee says that such "brand protection" is essential for the Games to raise the corporate money that keeps them going and growing.
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