New Hints and Speculation Point To Dynamic New Branding For Sochi 2014 and the Olympics

While still unconfirmed, this fuzzy photograph depicts the rumoured Sochi 2014 logo and could move Olympic branding into the Internet age.

A photograph rumoured to be that of the new official logo for the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games suggests that Olympic branding is moving in bold new directions.

While the official branding launch for Sochi 2014 won't happen until Monday at Red Square in Moscow, several Russian media outlets claim that they've already seen the new logo and the photograph above has reportedly been leaked

The logo has the words "sochi.ru" on the top line in bold characters followed by "2014" in the same font below it and the Olympic rings beside.  White, red and blue diagonal strips of colour wash over the text.

This style concept follows a trend started by the London 2012 Olympic organizing committee - that logo depicts "2012" in bold characters that can be washed with different colours and designs enabling the dynamic logo to be easily integrated with different sponsor brands and differnt sports.  Both the London logo and the Sochi logo in question are lacking any abstract symbol tradionionally found in recent Olympic logos such as the Inukshuk in the Vancouver 2010 logo.

"The logo will be the most innovative in the history of the Olympic Games", Sochi 2014 President Dmitry Chernyshenko told ITAR-TASS, it will "meet the modern demands of new technologies, the digital revolution".

He added that the logo is intended to reflect the changing audience of the Olympic Games - more young people.

The words "sochi.ru" in the logo would help accomplish this goal - it spells a Russia-based Internet domain name and would be the first time a digital address has been used in an official Olympic logo.  The choice of a lower-case 's' in Sochi is consistent with new digital communication styles used by today's youth.  The .ru, in addition to suggesting the Internet address, also explains that these are Russia's Games.

The Web site sochi.ru has been operating as a local information site since 1996, years before Sochi won the right to host the Olympics in 2007.  However in August the ownership of the domain was transferred to the Sochi 2014 organizing committee and now the address resolves to the official Olympic Web site. This is unprecedented since in the past Olympic hosts have used only the city/year naming convention for their Web site address - but the leaked logo would explain this new direction.

On Monday IOC President Jacques Rogge along with Chernyshenko and other dignitaries will officially launch the new Sochi 2014 branding with the logo and tagline at the Red Square celebration in Moscow.  There will also be celebrations in Sochi and across Russia.