Saturday
Jun262010
Are the Brits taking the piss out of the Olympic mascot?
Jun 26, 2010 at 12:19 PM 
Either their fucking with us, or this is the greatest dick joke of all time. peep the new mascot of the 2012 UK Olympics.
from brandinsiderstrategy.com
"They’ve done it again! Three years after the 2012 logo united England in disappointment, Locog – the organisers of the London Olympics – delivered another body blow for British design.
Wenlock, the mascot for the Olympic Games, was unveiled alongside Mandeville, the Para-Olympic mascot. With the usual Locog flair for impending disaster, the superficial elements were all stage-managed perfectly: a London schoolyard filled with happy, multicultural children playing harmoniously together against the backdrop of a graffiti rainbow. Suddenly, horrifically, they were joined by a man dressed as a large, white phallus who proceeded to frolic with the children in a quite alarming manner.
It was an indelible image. As a voiceover explained that the figure with the helmet-like head, single eye and dual appendages around his base was Wenlock, I was struck with a single, horrifying realisation: yes, but he looks like a penis.
Locog had been bitten once before by negative press and public reaction, and this time it came armed for a PR fight. The design team from Iris had been briefed so forcefully on how to defend its creation you could see the key messages from half a mile away. The design had cost “just a few thousand pounds” but had taken two whole years to perfect. There was a brand heritage story in which Wenlock’s name came from the Shropshire town that inspired the modern Olympic movement, and his body from the lost drop of steel used to manufacture the new Olympic Stadium. And then the killer proof point: the design had been guided by public reaction with “over 40 focus groups” commissioned as part of the process. "
from brandinsiderstrategy.com
"They’ve done it again! Three years after the 2012 logo united England in disappointment, Locog – the organisers of the London Olympics – delivered another body blow for British design.
Wenlock, the mascot for the Olympic Games, was unveiled alongside Mandeville, the Para-Olympic mascot. With the usual Locog flair for impending disaster, the superficial elements were all stage-managed perfectly: a London schoolyard filled with happy, multicultural children playing harmoniously together against the backdrop of a graffiti rainbow. Suddenly, horrifically, they were joined by a man dressed as a large, white phallus who proceeded to frolic with the children in a quite alarming manner.
It was an indelible image. As a voiceover explained that the figure with the helmet-like head, single eye and dual appendages around his base was Wenlock, I was struck with a single, horrifying realisation: yes, but he looks like a penis.
Locog had been bitten once before by negative press and public reaction, and this time it came armed for a PR fight. The design team from Iris had been briefed so forcefully on how to defend its creation you could see the key messages from half a mile away. The design had cost “just a few thousand pounds” but had taken two whole years to perfect. There was a brand heritage story in which Wenlock’s name came from the Shropshire town that inspired the modern Olympic movement, and his body from the lost drop of steel used to manufacture the new Olympic Stadium. And then the killer proof point: the design had been guided by public reaction with “over 40 focus groups” commissioned as part of the process. "
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