As you might have noticed, there is quite a bit of commotion surrounding our recent campaign for the University of Ghent, still under the Durf Denken moniker.

Apparently a journalist from De Morgen phoned the IOC itself upon seeing the advert above (before it was published, apparently). An ad we presented in raw form in december 2007 the Belgian Olympic Committee agreed to the use in this context. However, the IOC disagreed because the use of the trademarked rings is principally forbidden and asked the university to pull the ad.

As some of the articles seem to suggest that we would use a simple political statement in a campaign for one of our clients, we feel compelled to react. As De Morgen does not leave us any room for a rebuttal (we weren’t contacted either) we want to use this forum to give you a bit more of an explanation.

We presented the ad above to the Communication committee of the university in the beginning of December 2007, after a check with the BOIC who told us we would be allowed to use them in this context. The campaign never intended to be a political statement, but it sure is one way to view the ad.

For the record, that’s what we’ve been trying to do with all the ads for the University of Ghent from the beginning: invite people to start thinking. In this case, the ad raises several questions: will the world be changed by 2020? how would you start organising such a thing? what is the role of sports in global politics?…

Many different lectures are possible, and if you take a look at the other subjects that are a part of this campaign (not to mention the radio commercials), it will become apparent that there was no explicit political intention:

It is true that the whole commotion surrounding Steven Spielberg and the role of China (as the host country) in the african conflict became hot news at a certain point (culminating in the heading ‘Breng de Olympische droom naar Darfur’ -transl. bring the Olympic dream to Darfur- in De Morgen on the 15th of February). But as we did not see it grow into a bigger issue we decided to publish the campaign anyway.And while we can understand the IOC’s decision to ask the University to withdraw the campaign (even though we had permission from the BOIC), we don’t agree with the allegations that we capitalise on a small political event to use in a campaign for a client which steadfastly allows us to make great work for a fantastic brand.

Posted by Erik Meylemans