ABSTRACT
The appearance in 1996 of the third and final volume of the official centennial history of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was a watershed marker of the organization's new, if somewhat grudging willingness to have its own composition and internal memory publicly inspected. [1] Subsequently, the scandal surrounding the Salt Lake City bid process and the consequent Olympic reform effort greatly accelerated this development, creating a much broader public awareness of the structure and functioning of the IOC. [2] A new emphasis on administrative efficiency and transparency under the ensuing Jacques Rogge regime has extended a self-proclaimed ‘world's best practices’ style of management outward from the IOC itself to relations with Olympic bid and organizing committees and a wide variety of other stakeholders. [3] On the scholarly front, as led by the work of Olympic policy expert Jean-Loup Chappelet, an insightful professional scholarship on this new IOC governance has now appeared. [4] A number of IOC insider memoirs have also indicated (albeit in a more tendentious fashion) that these new managerial styles and practices were already being forwarded in the commercial marketing and broadcast rights arenas, though in a fashion generally less visible to public scrutiny because of corporate contractual secrecy. [5] One thing that did become only too apparent within IOC corridors and in public discussions of these external Olympic commercial relations was the appearance of the transnational marketing language of ‘brand’, ‘brand value’, and ‘brand management’ during this period.
