International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said of the London 2012 Olympic Games LOGO: “This is a truly innovative brand logo that graphically captures the essence of the London 2012 Olympic Games – namely to inspire young people around the world through sport and the Olympic values.” The logo took a year to be designed by brand consultants Wolff Olins and cost £400,000. Upon its unveiling in June of 2007, however, it received mostly negative reviews: The Independent claimed ‘The first medal of the Olympics has already been won…for the most unpopular logo in British marketing history’; The Daily Mail said ‘nearly 30,000 people signed a petition demanding its scrapping’; while The Times stated, ‘bookmakers are offering odds of 10/1 for it to be replaced. More serious complaints included the LOGO’s resemblance to a Nazi Swastika, Iran almost boycotted due to their belief that the LOGO appears to spell out the word ‘ZION’, and an animated sequence had to be removed from the 2012 Games website after complaints about people suffering epileptic seizures while viewing. More general complaints have included that the LOGO ‘looks like the image of cartoon character Lisa Simpson performing a lewd act’, its ‘a national embarrassment’, and simply ‘rubbish!’ (www.news.bbc.co.uk)
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