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'Celebrate Humanity' Olympic panel plans ads for Salt Lake Games
MOSCOW (AP) -- Trying to appeal to MTV viewers and focus on the athletes, the IOC unveiled a new ad campaign Monday to get people ready to watch the Salt Lake Winter Olympics. Under the banner "Celebrate Humanity," the eight spots featured narration by Robin Williams and background music by artists including Bob Marley, Radiohead and Daft Punk. The spots are intended to run as public-service information, not paid advertising. Two of the ads, full of action shots of snowboarders and freestyle skiers, are aimed at the youth market, said Dick Pound, the International Olympic Committee's marketing chief. "We want to broaden our appeal and alter the way we try to reach it," Pound said at a news conference, part of weeklong IOC meetings. "There is no mention of the IOC, no shots of anyone in a suit. If the MTVs of the world are interested in airing them, they're welcome to it." Other spots include the Jamaican bobsled team from the 1988 Calgary Games, the spectacular crash by Austrian skier Hermann Maier during the 1998 Nagano Games, and montages of ski jumpers, cross-country skiers, hockey players, speedskaters and figure skaters. The ads, seven of them 30 seconds long and the other a minute, are the second such package in a series the IOC launched in the wake of the Salt Lake bribery scandal, the worst in its history. The first spots were released before the Sydney Games last September and garnered the IOC an estimated "tens of millions of dollars" in free worldwide exposure, Pound said. "The images speak for themselves," Pound said when asked if the campaign would help people forget the scandal. "It stresses that the games are meant to be a big celebration."
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