Flying Kites above Beijing
Sun 17th August, 2008
By Charles Jefferson
The Olympic Games impact most of our lives at some point. Research shows us that the Olympic Rings remain the most iconic and recognized logo on the planet. The Games are universal with global coverage and appeal across age, sex and socio-economic groupings. For Olympic sponsors the internal audience is as important as consumers & customers and over recent Games involving, educating and exciting these stakeholders are key to global success.
McDonalds run their "Champions' Crew" where employees from around the world have the chance to staff the Media and public access McDonalds restaurants within the Olympic Green. As part of this program over 580 restaurants in China have rewarded best performing staff with the chance to serve athletes in the Athlete Village.
Within GE, employees have been involved through dedicated employee engagement programs from one year out. The objective is to inform and educate on GE’s commitment to providing sustainable solutions for the Olympic Movement but more importantly to entertain and excite people in the run up to each Games. For Beijing GE asked employees to design their own kite using an online kite tool. A kite was chosen not only for cultural relevance but also as a representation of the sustainable energy solutions (wind turbines) that are generating cleaner energy for the Olympic Green.
Over 9,000 entries were received online and over 15,000 voted on 8 finalists – with the winning kite coming from a US employee from the Energy business. The winning kite design has been adopted by GE and kites are being given to all visitors to the GE imagination center on the Olympic Green, and as you can see has captured the imagination of families and children at the Games.
No comments:
Post a Comment