“Olympics sponsor Samsung is reportedly dropping Galaxy Note 3 smartphones in athletes’ goodie-bags, though the gift comes with a catch: a supposed ban on any other device branding, iPhone or otherwise, during the opening ceremony,” Chris Davies reports for SlashGear. “Details of the clamp-down, which is said to require the Apple logo on an iPhone be physically covered so that it’s not caught on camera during the televised ceremony in Sochi, were spilled by the Swiss Olympic team.”
“The Note 3 [was] in among the other promotional kit sponsors have been offering, Bluewin reports, but the phone came with guidelines on what Samsung is said to be requiring in return for its financial support,” Davies reports. “Samsung is pushing the Note 3 hard at the Olympics, equipping what it’s describing as its ‘Galaxy Team’ athletes with the pen-enabled smartphone to demonstrate how their training and their trip abroad can be better documented.”
“Whether Samsung will get its wish or if the public eye will be distracted from its role in the event remains to be seen,” Davies reports. “Although the Swiss delegation is apparently happy with its accommodations, others visiting Sochi have been less impressed by the new hotels there, and quick to report their dissatisfaction with part-finished hotels and no running water.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Part-finished hotels and no running water. The perfect match for the user experience offered by Samsung phones.
Olympic athletes, cover the backs of your iPhones with these:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Some athletes naively think that they are going the game for the spirits of sports competition but in the core of the it, the political and money power-plays lead the game.
Too true.
The spirit of the Olympics isn’t about fair sportsmanship now, it’s about which corporate monolith organisation has the biggest wallet to plaster everything that gets shown on tv with their logo.
Expect repeating ads in ad breaks from crapsum.
Let the Korean brainwashing begin!
Imo the Olympics should be an opportunity for smaller businesses to get brand presence, not these global brands that don’t give a damn about their customers.
That’s fine. According to Gizmodo, computers and phones are constantly being hacked in Russia. Samsung can have the spotlight. And when the phones get hacked, Samsung will be the only one looking bad.
The IOC will enforce this without batting an eye. They are fascists when it comes to branding.