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[Durban Sandshark]

Just strolling through some Olympic commercials for future use as I was writing this until I touched on this one that really caught my attention. Seems contemporary enough from Budweiser. It's about a yuppie heading to the bar after a hard day's work during a hot day, likely in the west coast city like LA, about ready to shoot some pool or leave the place, and catches the American Olympian getting gold that piques everybody else's. The jacket on the gold medalist screams the 1988 one (more on that later), so it was made in time for NBC's Seoul telecast for its commercial breaks. What got my attention the most was of the man playing the Olympian: Eriq La Salle! Before ER. Right around the time he was getting notoriety playing the spoiled and somewhat socially ignorant Soul-Glo heir Daryl Jenks in "Coming To America", fighting for the attention of McDowell's daughter with Zamunda's Prince Akeem. The Adidas podium jacket? Notice how the colors are reversed from what the actual US Olympians wore on the medal stand in Seoul from largely blue to red. The style is the same, though. Maybe it was a prototype.

[Durban Sandshark]

Ah, Ben Johnson. The Jamaican-born Canadian sprinter. Undoubtably, the most notorious drug cheat ever and disgraced his adopted nation in the process. What more can be further uttered? In the leadup to the Seoul Olympics where he seemingly blew away everybody like he did in Rome the year before in sham races, he appears in this 1988 Finnish Valio Milk Energy commercial by giving a Finnish boy a great delight upon seeing his favorite athlete. What would that boy would think now after what has transpired? Don't you think it wasn't just the milk and its nutrients did his body good? Valio is Finland's largest processor and is owned by its farmers and milk producers.



We got another notable 80s Olympic star in the following. She's much more endearing and remains so to this day, especially whenever she flashes that massive sweetheart smile. Yes, I'm talking about 1984 gymnastics legend Mary Lou Retton. Does she ever any perkier? I'll bring up all the commercials she's done, even up to now with the Diary Queen and the pinata. She's telling us the Energizer AA batteries in 1985 are now "supercharged". No need to get redundant three times, now that we got better minerals in our batteries that can last longer like lithium from Energizer. Years later, that pink bass drum-banging bunny came to rule the company.

[Durban Sandshark]

Between the years 1995 and 2001, IBM produced and aired a successful series of diverse, numerous, and multicultural TV commercials under the popular "Solutions For A Small Planet" ad campaign. At that time, it was taking a lead from what Coca-Cola was doing with its "Always Coca-Cola" campaign in terms of its diversity of ads in order to attract a wide fanbase that already knows about the fizzy iconic cola. To emphasize and reflect the "small planet" portion of the commercials and the globalization of computer technology like the Internet and software programs, an overwhelming number of them were done in various languages other than English that were aired in the US and worldwide. Whenever those small number of these IBM TV commercials were in English, the dialogue wasn't done in everyday conversational English. Two that I recall are the one at the Australian hotel in 1996 when Trevor shows off his laptop to his mates in the outskirts of the outback speaking 'Strine and a group of California surfers using surf slang. These ads dealt with how usually IBM's innovation, technology, and software will help people in various walks and stages of life wherever they are. Oftentimes, the second person will offer it as a solution. These commercials ranged from a man and his granddaughter talking about him working on his doctoral thesis thanks to IBM condensing the entire University of Indiana's library while walking through the grandfather's vast vineyard (Italian); a team of scientists and researchers stranded in the Amazon rainforest (Brazilian Portuguese); a husband offering IBM voice recognition technology for his wife's monthly marketing analysis while doing the tango (Argentinian Spanish); Santa's helpers saving Kris Kringle at the last minute with a secure Internet website to connect with business people, toy orders and revenue, and updates on the good boys and girls (Norweigan); a group of fisherman working on their day's catch (Greek); on the trail catching a criminal at the Hong Kong harbour (Cantonese); Ladysmith Black Mambazo hitting the right notes through the use of IBM Kid Riffs during an outdoor choir practice (Zulu); two businessmen discussing IBM tech solutions at a bazaar (Arabic); and during a surgery with the patient not anathesized (Indonesian?). I enjoyed these ads for they showed the aforementioned multiculturalism and the widespread use of languages other than English in commercials on American TV. If anybody was going to do it, it was the all-powerful IBM.

It was during this span that Big Blue was a TOP Olympic sponsor and even powered the Olympic websites from Atlanta to Sydney--I miss the Sydney website it did! There in those Olympics it developed something like a popular yet primitive social networking pages for Olympians of sorts predating (or eveolved to) the likes of Xanga, Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Google+, and VKontakte (the Russian Facebook) where fans can write brief messages to them and they can write back. Some got more messages than others like Wayne Gretzky did in Nagano. IBM devised a series of commercials profiling a small sampling of athletes between Nagano and Sydney to air on TV worldwide. Many of these athletes were also-rans, the ones who Bob Costas always remind us every Olympics NBC airs that they will never even get a sliver of an Olympic medal. I already showed the Elena Liashenko IBM Japan commercial for her immense popularity there; it's somewhat related but not really connected to the following. For the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, IBM selected the British curling team (on location in their native Scotland), figure skater Yulia Lavrenchuk (Ukraine), skiier Andreas Vasili (Cyprus), the Japanese women's ice hockey team, and figure skating pair Marina Khaulterina and Andrei Krukov (Kazakhstan). For Sydney, the roster featured Waneek Horn-Miller (Canada, water polo), Stephen Davies (Australia, field hockey), Akhenaton Spencer-El (USA, fencing), and Mame Maty Mbengue (Senegal, basketball). I can even remember an IBM print ad featuring New Zealand skeletoner Angela Paul, later a flag bearer for NZ in Salt Lake City in the OC, on USA Today. None really scream superstar, and that was the point with them--to be more open-minded and intrigued about other Olympians. Obviously, the host nations had to be involved in these. With these, Olympic fans are encouraged to "look for me" and others on the Olympic pages to get to know them. Many of them were like :30 "Up Close and Personals" with family and friends talking about them too. Unfortunately, almost all of them are presently not on YouTube right now. So I can't link them, which were nicely done. Perhaps they were there and since taken off, I have no way of knowing. In one heartbreaking moment into Lavrenchuk's commercial after going out to her daily skating practice on a crowded Kiev streetcar bus, Yuila had to hastily cut short her practice at the rink to make way for a kids' hockey game. In the Kazak figure skating pair one, kids were asking them questions online regarding their nation. They never spoke--just skating at a frozen pond. Likely because neither spoke enough English.

But I did find one such of these commercials! Japan as hosts automatically qualified its women's ice hockey team for the debut of Olympic women's ice hockey in Nagano. Chie Chie Sakuma is your guide for her team in this IBM commercial, likely because she's apparently the only player on it back then who could speak a conversational level of English. They "[weren't] the favorites". They sure weren't playing like they were the favorites; in fact, they flat out sucked as the only second Asian team in the field with China, finishing dead last in a field of 8 scoring only 2 goals and giving up 48. Japan made it back in a top-level international women's ice hockey tournament at times only doing the yo-yo routine mostly being at Division I in the IIHF World Championships, despite being being among the top 5 Asian women's ice hockey nations, usually one-two with China. It was as much of a cultural thing with women's ice hockey in Japan and learning how to cope with it. Anyway, none of its national teams understandably played last year because of the earthquake. Gotta love that all-Japanese girl punk rock as the soundtrack! My favorite moment is when they all mob each other after scoring agoal and collapsing on the ice with the music stopping because they weren't supposed to do that. For some reason, that reminds me of the Teletubbies in this. The Japanese women's program will return this year in international hockey and hopefully be much better than they were back then.

[Durban Sandshark]

Brazilian basketball legend and five-time Olympian Oscar Schmidt encourages his team of supermarket staff for good team service at Brazilian supermarket chain Bon Marche.