The website for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics has a list of frequently asked questions about the Olympic Brand, and one of the questions reads: “I want to support the 2010 Winter Games and Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes. What can I do?”

The answer begins: “You can support the 2010 Winter Games by not engaging in the unauthorised use of the Olympic Brand, by not supporting businesses that infringe the Olympic Brand or engage in ambush marketing, and by not purchasing counterfeit merchandise.”

The statement is something of a downer for the enthusiasts who are eager to show their national pride in the run up to the Games, but this is the type of vigilance that the Olympic organisers deem necessary today in order to protect the sanctity and integrity of their brand.

Running the Olympics is tricky business. On the one hand, the organisers want to reach every corner of the globe, publicising this prestigious, joyous event. On the other, they need to keep the Olympics’ proprietary insignia away from unauthorised users, because sponsorships – the right to use the logos and brand name – are a big part of what pays for the hosting of the Games. And the organisers can’t afford to devalue that. But when do they cross the line from protecting the brand to just plain raining on everyone’s parade?

“When Vancouver won the bid to host the Winter Olympics in July of 2003, we were made the temporary custodian of the brand, meaning that the International Olympic Committee handed over brand protection duties to us,” says Bill Cooper, director of commercial rights management for the Vancouver organising committee. “What that mainly involves is ensuring that we deliver clean venues, so there is no conflicting branding inside or surrounding the venues.”

The FAQs, of course, show that a “clean” venue entails more than just waxed floors and shiny new equipment. Unauthorised use of any of the Olympic symbols is forbidden in the venues, and that includes the rings, the host city logo, the torch and various other symbols and names. But “any other marks that are confusingly similar to, or likely to be mistaken for, the Olympic Brand” are also banned.

Ambush marketing is a big no-no, and it’s one of the more formidable challenges the committee must fend off. It’s basically defined as a company who is trying to feign an association with the Olympic Games (Change Agent isn’t!). Again, the website provides an extensive summary of this type of forbidden fruit. They range from the obvious (no capitalising on the Olympics in marketing campaigns, no Olympic-related giveaways such as posters and stickers) to the more esoteric (no congratulatory awards for Olympic athletes, no contests offering trips to the Olympic Games). Even if your company name contains the word “Olympic” and happens to have been established after January 1998, more than a decade before the Games are due to begin, you’d be required to change your company name (January 1998 is the month that Vancouver’s bid for the 2010 Games was “first publicly discussed”).

Some of the newer terms in the Olympic contract require the host city to pass federal legislation against ambush marketing, which is useful to some degree. One case that the Beijing committee has publicised is Tag Heuer’s sponsorship of China’s diving team, with the accompanying advertising tagline: “Tag Heuer Watches support China’s diving team to participate in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and have become its official timekeeper”. Sponsoring individual teams has been one way of getting out of paying hefty sponsorship fees, but the committee has wised up to this loophole, and isn’t afraid to put a stop to it – as it did with Tag Heuer.

Another example of the evolution of ambush marketing legislation comes from the Salt Lake City Games in 2002. Schirf Brewery branded their beverage with the slogan “The Unofficial Beer. 2002 Winter Games”. A clever means of avoiding legal trouble because it had proclaimed its unofficial status, and hadn’t infringed on any Olympic trademarks. Although copyrighting a term such as “Beijing 2008” is not possible due to the vagueness of the expression, today an unofficial advertiser would be charged with associating itself with the event on bad faith. The trademark offices in host cities have a pretty good idea of what can or cannot be done.

“We’re very mindful of free speech and of giving people the opportunity to engage with the event, and we do know the difference between schools using the Olympic rings in a classroom to discuss the Games, and commercial organisations who are trying to fool consumers,” Cooper says. “At the end of the day, we have to protect the investment that the official sponsors have made.” After all, it’s the sponsors that pay for the Games.

“We know that one way in which companies seek to [exploit unauthorised association with the Games] is by attaching themselves to Games-related events and programmes established by not-for-profit organisations,” writes Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London 2012 committee, in the introduction to the brand manual found on the London Olympic website. “Whilst we don’t doubt the merits behind such programmes, we cannot risk business undermining the exclusivity and value we can offer to our sponsors in this way.

“If we are not able to raise the sponsorship money we need, there will be two serious consequences. Firstly, it will compromise our ability to deliver a high-quality Games. And second, it will damage our chances of making a profit, which we plan to use to support sporting projects after 2012.”

At the end of the day, the Olympics is one big money-making machine, and the organisers have the right to protect their trademarks just as much as Kentucky Fried Chicken has the right to protect its secret recipe for chicken. Inevitably, others are going to try and copy the recipe – especially when the recipe is as easy as drawing five multi-coloured rings – but that doesn’t mean they’re going to get away with it... even if it is unintentional.

“In 2006, we uncovered 300 cases of unauthorised use of Olympic trademarks, and 90% of those cases were alerted to us through voluntary compliance, the rest via law enforcement and ‘brand scouts’,” Cooper says. That tells us that it is easy to unintentionally infringe upon trademarks. But the committees are trying to safeguard a brand through education and enforcement, not by filling up the city’s prisons.

Even those who seek to make Olympics merchandise have to go through a lengthy pitch process, carried out in stages by the host committee, who chooses licensed merchandisers based on a combination of factors including business proposal, quality of merchandise, reputation and price point. Any unlicensed merchandise found is seized – there’s nothing ambiguous about intention when it comes to merchandising.

“Our aim is to find a happy medium between protecting the brand, but at the same time allow for community engagement,” says Cooper. “The value of the Olympic brand is in its exclusivity – if we don’t have the reputation, we have nothing.”