I found this to be quite ironic. ESPN is running this article right now about the blackout on using Olympic athletes in advertising during the games, but check out the banner at the top of the page. I’m sure if you click the link there will be lots of different ads that show in that top banner slot, but the screenshot above is what I got the first time I saw the article.

If you read the top part of that article, it gets in to how Danny Kass was almost disqualified due to one of his sponsors having a good luck message in one of their stores. I understand why the IOC has rules around not advertising with Olympic athletes during the games since I can see it getting way out of hand, but in some cases I think they just go way too far. I love the creativity of how Target used the blacked-out image of Shaun White with “gone to vancouver” in that Times Square billboard, but in my opinion, that's far more blatant than a “good luck” poster in a store window. It’s smack in the middle of TIMES SQUARE! Of course, I haven’t seen how that window graphic was done, so it could have been a completely legit request by the IOC.

Back to ESPN though…seems to me they should have been a bit more proactive in pulling their own ads before releasing an article like this. Nice job, fellas.

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