Using giant golden keys to "open the gates to the most important market in the world," officials from Beijing's 2008 Olympics organizing committee launched the games' marketing plan Monday with a carefully choreographed public-relations extravaganza.
The six-hour event at one Beijing's toniest hotels was packed with speeches and videos filled with images of smiling children and athletes -- and promises to fight China's rampant counterfeit goods industry, which some fear will threaten vendors of Olympics merchandise.
"The games will open the gates to the most important market in the world," International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said in a speech to 600 Chinese and foreign business leaders, officials and potential sponsors.
"There has never been a marketing event so powerful and so full of promise," Rogge said.
Rogge and Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Olympics organizing committee -- and also the capital's Communist Party secretary -- were presented with two golden keys that "opened" a panel to reveal a giant, rotating globe onto which stylized images of Beijing were projected.
The Beijing Olympic officials will manage licensing, sponsorship and partnership programs. Partnerships and sponsorships, which include four-year exclusive marketing rights, will be up for sale later this year, organizers said.
The licensing program will authorize companies to produce and sell products with the official Olympic emblem only after paying royalties to the Olympic committee.
"Olympic marketing not only provides sufficient funding for a more successful games but offers useful experience for ensuring the sound development for all industries, including sports," said Yuan Weimin, Minister of the State Sport General Administration.
China has taken great pains to prove to the world that it is cracking down on the country's rampant copyright piracy, which international trade groups have estimated costs Western companies US$16 billion in sales each year.
Government officials recently said they'd confiscated 134 garments in Beijing that incorporated fake reproductions of the new Olympics logo -- an abstract drawing of a runner that also evokes the Chinese character for "capital city."
Last year, 130,000 items that infringed on the trademarks of several preliminary 2008 Olympic logos were confiscated in the capital.
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