Boycotting the Olympics


Dear marketing people,

for various reasons that I don’t feel I need to go into here (because face it, you all know what they are) I’ve decided to boycott this year’s Olympic games. Not only will I not be participating (yeah, right) but I’m extending my personal boycott to the following:

  • I will not watch the Olympics on television. Your marketing dollars spent on the games will not reach me
  • I will try not to read about the sports events. This is probably not going to hurt anyone much, and there are still articles about the politics of the Olympics that I might read, but I’ll give the sports event the same amount of attention that I give to professional soap box racing in Tasmania.
  • I won’t buy any products that advertise with the Olympics.

That last item is most likely going to be the hardest. I already stopped buying Coca Cola (though I’ll extend it to restaurants) and eating at McDonalds, so those are going to be a major issue. But today I noticed that Tine is sponsoring the Norwegian Olympics team – so many of their products are off limits.

I’m lazy in my extremism, so I will limit my boycott to such items that actually carry the 5 rings on them. If you’re supporting the warolympic effort, but it’s not obvious to me while I’m in the shop, you might get away with that.

Olympic boycott?

The fire is lit. The games must continue. Today the German national Olympic Committee announced that they will participate no matter what. My guess is that the Chinese would have to carpet bomb Tibet for anyone to boycott the games now. Too much is riding on having good economic relations with China, and officials cannot afford themselves even minor criticism.

Which means that it is now up to us as consumers to decide for ourselves whether we want to see these Olympics or not. I urge everyone who is in favor of a boycott not to tune in the summer, not to participate in the discussion of winners, losers and gold medals. Our governments may not be in a strong enough position to say no, but we certainly are.