Filed under: Adam, Fashion, Sports & Health
Author: Adam
Date: Dec 16, 2009
Anyone who knows me at all knows that I abhor the Winter Olympics coming to Vancouver in 2010.
This gestapo-esquely run city-ruiner is a plague of biblical proportions: swards of locusts (tourists) invade the city, ruin the crops and prevent me from driving everywhere I need to be (unacceptable!) as only the top 1% of the city actually reap any long-term benefits from this disaster. Now, you might have read my previous article about my refusal to vote (see here) but I definitely would have, had I been eligible to do so regarding this monstrosity! But, the mindless masses decided having streets shut down for a year (sorry businesses on Cambie) and multi-multi-million dollar speed skating arenas in Richmond (which will never again see purposeful use) built were GOOD ideas- so we’re stuck.
Now, however, we finally see a local company take their’s from this quagmire. Vancouver-based favourite of many, Lululemon, has decided to trick this litigious bunch with their new “Olympic-ish Brand” campaign: “Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 & 2011 Edition,” and VANOC is not having any of it!
Reported yesterday in the National Post, was a creative new advertisement campaign that takes the lemons of this horrific international debacle and turns them into (lulu)lemonade!! (Patrick, that was for you!)
Basically, the designers of the local athletic-wear company decided to do ALL their research before hand and figure out the exact extent of referencing they can make to the Olympics and slyly sell new outfits as pro-Olympic wear (ugh, for those who like that kind of thing). The good commies at VANOC have created a “Protecting the Brand” calculator on their Heaven’s-Gate-of-a-website informing just how little we peons are allowed to reference and allude to them in the sales department. So, in making good use of that “calculator”, Lululemon has labyrinthinely established their 2010-wear in a tongue-and-cheek manner that both supports the event and thumbs their nose at their possessive directors by escaping royalties for not directly quoting the “2010 Olympics”.
The VANOC-ers are of course completely up in arms about this and have their 1400 your-taxes-hard-at-work paid lawyers busily at work trying to sue the clothing line for everything they’re worth. I say damn the man and let the lulu be! They’re smart enough to get around your myriad of clauses so let’s just announce them the winners already. By the way, the fact that I doubled my money with my stocks in this company after the first month of their stock going public has NOTHING to do with the skew of this article: I really just hate the Olympics that much ;)
Dan
December 16th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
This is literally one of the BEST concepts I have ever seen, and it came from a Canadian retailer!
Absolutely brilliant and I am so proud of them for doing their leg work up front to ensure they did nothing illegal or worthy of reprimand. Kudos lululemon!
Stephen
December 16th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
I love that you just used the word labyrinthinely.
Dan
December 16th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Good call Stephen!
Adam
December 17th, 2009 at 2:15 am
I think I owe David Bowe 10 bucks for the use of that ;)
Mike
January 17th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
This article has an interesting subject (Lululemon hijacking the Olympic brand to help their own brand), but it was poorly-written and filled with a bunch of b.s. The Vancouver “brand” will see some benefit from the Olympics as well.
Also, the Olympic Ovalin Richmond will be used again…as a sporting complex and site for community programs…as with the UBC hockey arena and the other Olympic venues.
Other than that..go Lululemon! RBC tried to do something like that too..and now they’re taking down their advertising hehe.
Adam
January 18th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Yikes, I usually get beat up for my opinions, but this is the first time for the actual writing… double checked the grammar and seemed fine to me, but i’m sure you saw many mistakes in the “poorly-written” article that I didn’t… interesting use of a dash by the way, I think you learned a different type of english writing ;)