The debate over the controversial London 2012 Olympic Games logo has gone global, with almost 350,000 unique visitors from 178 countries visiting the website of Locog, the London games organising committee.
Traffic to Locog’s website is estimated to have doubled every 24 hours since the design was unveiled on Monday.
By 5pm UK time on Wednesday, the website had generated almost 1m page views, reflecting the heated argument and interest sparked by Locog’s choice.
The committee opted for a graffiti-esque, multi-coloured representation of the numbers in the 2012 date. It eschews the athletic figures, colourfuls swirls or local landmarks typical of logos used by Olympic host cities such as Barcelona, Sydney and Beijing.
Nevertheless, experts fear that continuing criticism could undermine Locog’s efforts to demonstrate widespread backing for the games in the UK and to raise £2bn towards the games’ costs from sponsorship, merchandising and ticket sales.
Locog says the design was chosen to appeal particularly to younger audiences and to function across different media including the web and mobile phone screens.
But in the UK media, the design by Wolff Olins, the branding agency which also devised the 2004 Athens Olympic brand, has been widely attacked.
An online petition calling for the logo to be scrapped gathered 48,615 signatures by the time its organiser announced on Thursday he had decided to close the petition for fear of causing further damage to the London Games reputation. UK MPs and other figures have lined up to criticise the logo. Among bloggers, opinions have been mixed.
Critics have slated the £400,000 cost of researching, developing and designing the logo and described the result variously as “a broken swastika” and “gobbledygook”.
However, Olympic sponsors including VISA, the credit card brand, and Lloyds TSB, the UK high street bank, have embraced the logo and used it in their marketing campaigns. Visit London, which markets the city to overseas travellers, also plans to use it.
Internet users from various countries have also accepted the Locog website’s invitation to download and customise the design, with their efforts showcased on the website.
Nigel Currie, director of Brand Rapport, a UK company specialising in sponsorship, said: “There was some hue and cry over Sydney’s Olympic logo when it was first unveiled, but the reaction to the London logo has been unprecedented. Locog certainly doesn’t have to worry that it won’t be recognised by people in the UK.”
Rita Clifton, UK chairman of Interbrand, the branding consultancy, said: “Whether people like it or not is not the point – likeability is not correlated with effectiveness in branding. It would have been easy for Locog to do something grand and bland. It is very important now that the organisers show a great deal of confidence in it and keep showing it so people will get used to it.”
She added: “It would be a great shame if they were to change their minds about it as it does what it was supposed to do which was to capture something dynamic and distinctive about Britain. It would have been easy to have put Big Ben or the Tower of London in the logo.”
In a separate move, Ofcom, the UK media regulator, will investigate three complaints from viewers that television companies broadcast footage of the logo which involved flickering images.
Under UK regulation, broadcasters are required to issue a warning if they show images which include flickering lights that might affect people with photosensitive epilepsy.
