“The term ‘Team GB’ is infuriating. Where did it come from and why the hell do we need it? Do the French Olympic squad call themselves ‘Equipe F’?” asks David Mitchell (above) of “Peep Show” / “That Mitchell & Webb Look” infamy via his Guardian blog. “Why do we have to give our squad a twee little name?” I dunno, because “Team Sarah Records” was already taken?
If Coca-Cola didn’t spend money on their logo, they’d sell less sugary liquid and make less profit. But when public money is spent like this, as it is whenever a government ministry changes from being the department of something to the department for something, it is just being pissed away for no reason. Branding our Olympic squad Team GB has not in any way helped it win more medals and those who would argue that it has, perhaps citing some bullshit about the homogeneity of the team, are either morons or they think our athletes are.
At the very least the money would have been better spent providing a few more puncture repair kits for the cyclists.
The obsession with giving non-profit-making organisations the same branding paraphernalia as private companies that actually have a use for it is capitalism’s final victory. Even when people aren’t motivated by financial gain, as Team GB certainly primarily aren’t, they have to ape the mannerisms of those who are. It’s nothing more or less than playing shop, it’s pathetic.
And, worse than that, it’s been ineptly done because the Team GB logo is crap. It’s like something I might have knocked up on an Amstrad PCW for the school drama society. The word “team” is lower case, pointlessly and incorrectly, and it slightly overlaps the “GB” in a way that looks like a mistake. Below the words is a drawing of the top of a lion done in the colours of the Union Jack, which is OK but I think is nicked off the logo for one of our presidencies of the EU (maybe that means we got it cheap), but this time the lion’s head and top of its back are stuck on top of the Olympic rings, as if the lion underwent a horrific accident and now has to drag itself around on a huge Olympic logo-shaped roller skate, presumably mewing about British sporting glories past. If they were relying on this, rather than national pride, to appeal to consumers, they’d be screwed.