Confusing Olympic mascots may hurt sales

A marketing expert says the 2010 Olympic mascots may charm children, but they confuse adults and that may make it harder for the Games to strike gold in the retail arena.

VANOC hopes partner retailers can sell $500 million worth of plush toys and other merchandise, generating $46 million in royalties for the Games.

But SFU marketing professor Lindsay Meredith says that may be optimistic given the puzzled reaction of many adults to two of the mascots – Sumi and Miga – that are hybrids of bears and orcas with a dash of aboriginal lore.

"As soon as you've got people on the street saying 'What is it?' guess what – you've got a problem," he said.

Too many people see Miga as a skunk rather than a Kermode bear-orca hybrid, Meredith said.

And as with any product that doesn't resonate with the target audience, he said, Olympic organizers will have to "advertise the hell" out of the mascots to promote and explain them.

"Now they're going to have to spend advertising money – that's called profit – to build that identification," Meredith said. "And that can be expensive."

He predicts a "very serious advertising campaign" will be needed to achieve the sales target.

A third mascot, Quatchi, is based on a sasquatch, a concept Meredith says is little known beyond Canada and the northwestern U.S.

"You're going to have to teach the world what a sasquatch is," he predicted. "So there goes the advertising budget again."

Meredith gave VANOC full credit for delivering mascots appealing to kids.

But adults are also important, he said, because they, not children, will do the buying.

"The majority of plush toys are given adult to adult, not adults to kids," he added.

He argued more mundane choices derived more directly from B.C. wildlife – the spirit bear, moose, orca, beaver or even a polar bear – would have delivered more universal appeal across age groups and have wide global recognition and association with Canada.

He said the Japanese anime style of the creatures would be a smash hit in Japan, but most people coming in 2010 will be coming from North America rather than Asia.

It could have been worse, he says, citing the 2006 Torino Games as the worst recent example of bungled mascots.

"The Italian mascots – the snowballs or whatever it is – they couldn't give it away."