The past couple of days left me frustrated with the OFFICIAL website of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Poor job really but all in line with Beijing’s normal characteristic: bad PR (public relations). Who is to blame, I don’t know. Maybe Sohu (who is the webmaster) or is it BOCOG who does not provide the information. Probably both.
Be sure that, whatever you really need to find, will not be there. The search function sucks and normally will NOT give you anything you were looking for. Some of the information is good – others are poor, non-existent or out-dated. But it looks “flashy”.
The website of China Daily might not be perfect but usually I manage to retrieve what I need, using the headline of the article (from the hard copy I read). Except for the “Olympian”, the weekly supplement. Again, many articles are unavailable and forget the search tool.
Three examples:
1. marketing program: scarce or zero information on who was appointed (when? for what?) as Supplier or Exclusive Supplier. E.g.: STAPLES. Don’t even search for it – result is zero. Also Johnson&Johnson appears twice. Great. I complained, no reaction. I also criticized publicly the presentation: many Chinese company logos are… in Chinese only. Clicking the logos you go to their website and … don’t hold your breath. Most have no English (most of the links are broken) and many don’t even explain clearly what they do and what is their involvement in the Olympics.
All not important – except if those companies have the illusion they want to use the Olympic sponsorship to make their brand “world famous”. Good luck. Go and look for yourself… After I complained (to the great shock of the journalists) they put some explanation on the website that promptly disappeared again.
2. “Olympic Schools” or “Olympic Education Model Schools”: just try to find out anything about that. Zilch. Fortunately I found a hard copy of “The Official BOCOG Newsletter”, Issue 29, June 2006. It’s all in there. Wanna know, pay me. (Took me several days to find out what I needed!)
3. The Brochure I mentioned: in the past (the old website), you could retrieve all previous Newsletters in PDF. Well, bad luck, no more. Including that very issue I needed. So, I can maybe scan it myself (16 pages…). Asked a friend at BOCOG, see if she can solve my riddle. I keep you posted.
Long way to go really. Pity for the staff at BOCOG – some are really doing a great job and have to endure a lot of difficulties in their daily work.