Coca-Cola is capping its London 2012 Olympics sponsorship with its biggest giveaway ever in the U.K., where it's also sponsoring the 2012 Paralympic Games.

The soft drink giant is running a one-day promotion, Monday Sept. 3rd only, giving away 500ml bottles of Coca-Cola, Coke Zero or Diet Coke at Boots and Superdrug stores to those who register first online. It's being promoted with a 100-foot tall vending machine in London's Brick Lane, as you can see in the TV spot which features "Anywhere in the World," the brand's original London 2012 song created by producer Mark Ronson.

As part of its top-tier Olympics sponsorship, Coca-Cola underwrote the London Olympics torch relay and launched "Move to the Beat," a music-based global marketing platform, in addition to installing a giant interactive Beatbox pavilion at the London Olympics site.

With the 2012 Olympic Games a week away, brands are beginning to get an idea of just how much of a bump they got from a few weeks in London at the most watched event in TV watching history.

When it comes to the most effective ambush marketing campaigns, there is no shortage of contenders. Paddy Power took true ambush action and suffered the International Olympic Committee's significant wrath. BMW's Mini executed probably the most garish ambush strategy during the discus and javelin events. And it's easy to see Nike as a favorite. Its "greatness" campaign was a hit from America to China.

But another brand stood out more than Nike -- from America to China -- and saw an immediate, significant sales increase. It's a brand that appears to be making unconventional marketing its core platform for brand building: Beats by Dr. Dre. Continue reading...

Just before and during the London Olympics, athletes were not allowed to tweet support for advertisers and marketers unless they were official sponsors of the Games. This led to a few of them being so irked that they tweeted with such hash tags as #wedemandchange and #rule40 so the general public could see that it wasn’t all rainbows and Happy Meals at the Olympic Village.

The ban has been lifted and one of the fastest to take advantage, of course, was the Fastest Man in the World, Usain Bolt. As Ad Age points out, the above Gatorade ad he appears in explicitly notes that the company wasn’t an official sponsor, with a narrator saying, "We weren't there on stadium billboards. We weren't there on double-decker buses. We weren't on buttons, souvenirs or commemorative snow globes. We weren't there officially sponsoring anything. We were there for real -- inside the bodies of some of the greatest athletes on earth." While the voice rolls on, a mysterious figure wearing a hood walks the streets of London before being revealed to be Bolt. Continue reading...

No Chinese Olympian needed to have a better 2012 Games than Li-Ning. While Li himself was no longer competing on the gymnastics stage, he was competing as the newly reinstated CEO of the wobbly sportswear brand that bears his name.

With Nike making a high-profile move to sponsor gold medalist hurdler Liu Xiang and the wildly popular China basketball team, Li-Ning desperately a monster showing in London. It got it.Continue reading...

It’s a wrap for the London 2012 Olympics, and in addition to the new athletic records that were set, fans, brands and athletes interacting together collectively took the gold as the undisputed winner of the first Social Olympics.

From the opening ceremony on July 27th, which generated 9.66 million tweets (and in the next 24 hours more than all those during the entire 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing), a total of more than 150 million tweets were shared during and about the Olympics.

World's Fastest Man™ Usain Bolt was the most talked about athlete, inspiring a blinding fast 80,000 tweets per minute (TPM) during his gold medal-winning 200m sprint and 74,000 TPM during his 100m run, while the Spice Girls reunion at the closing ceremony inspired 116,000 TPM.

Twitter's recap highlights other social highlights of these games including: Michael Phelps and Tom Daley trailing Bolt as the most discussed athletes, and Andy Murray, third-highest at 57,000 TPM after winning the gold medal in men’s tennis singles.Continue reading...

Nike closed out the London 2012 Olympics in China with a gold medal ambush marketing performance that parlayed its Find Your Greatness fauxlympics stunt to new heights.

We already noted how Nike retooled its campaign for China's star hurdler Liu Xiang after the former gold medalist imploded in the first few steps of a preliminary race. 

Now, Nike has used the same format — inspirational message superimposed on a photo — to suggest its support for many of China's star Olympic athletes, whether the Swoosh sponsored them or not. Goodness Gracious, Greatness Wall of China!Continue reading...

As the world (and London's Heathrow airport) bids adieu to the Summer Olympians and gets ready for the Paralympic Games, a few thoughts to leave you with:

IOC Chief Rogge Celebrates His Last Games            

International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge is getting ready to pass on the leadership torch and he is ending his long reign a happy man. Rogge toasted London’s Games Sunday, saying that these Olympics were “absolutely fabulous.” What bigger compliment can there be?

London 2012 Will Be Paid Off in Nine Years

The Summer Olympics may have cost billions for London to throw, including all the lost revenue from tourists who were scared away and residents who worked at home during the Games. But the Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates that the whole extravagant shebang will pay for itself by 2021. The big jump will come in 2015, the think tank estimates, when the country will start generating an extra £1.8billion ($2.8 billion) a year due to the Games.Continue reading...

In addition to featuring a Who's Who — including The Who — of British music (Annie Lennox, Ray Davies, the Spice Girls, George Michael, Madness, Blur), the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games paid tribute to British fashion brands.

The models hitting the Union Jack-shaped stage: Kate Moss (above) and Naomi Campbell in Alexander McQueen, Lily Donaldson wearing Vivienne Westwood, Stella Tennant in Christopher Kane, model/singer Karen Elson in Burberry, Lily Cole sporting Erdem, Georgia May Jagger (the offspring of fashion/music royalty Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall) wearing Victoria Beckham (a double brandcameo for the Spice Girl turned designer), Jourdan Dunn (Jonathan Saunders with headwear by milliner Stephen Jones) and David Gandy wearing Paul Smith.

The soundtrack: David Bowie's Fashion, of course. Bowie couldn't be included in the musical portion from the ceremony as he hasn't performed live since 2006.Continue reading...