Aug 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Rod Taylor

With the 2004 Athens Olympic Games upon us, I'm reminded of my own brush with Olympic glory in 1984. Of all the things I've seen in thirty-two years in the promotions business, nothing equals the mania I witnessed back then over the fairly benign little hobby of pin collecting. These one-inch-or-less bits of colored glass and paint were without question the greatest promotion premiums I'd ever seen and they made me what I am today — a confirmed pinhead!

“Pinhead,” the endearing self-appellation of pin collectors, may be the only really honest description used by anyone collecting anything anywhere. Truly devout pinheads don't just mail in for sponsor-offered pin promotions; they order one for every friend and relative they have that has a mailbox. Pins represent the ultimate marketing premium: they're ridiculously low in cost (easily less than a dollar) and have an excellent perceived value ($5 to $7). In fact, there's only one other item I can think of that enjoys the mark-up that collectible pins do — dope!

At the heart of pin collecting is pin trading, and in order to trade you must have duplicate pins to barter. To get duplicates, you are forced to leverage every manufacturer's promotion, every friendship and every business relationship you've ever had.

During the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, my promotional connections allowed me to acquire a collection of pins that I still cherish 20 years later. When I first started collecting, I made every effort to acquire pins from the participating athletes from foreign countries. I had pins with the Union Jack from Great Britain, a wonderful red hammer-and-sickle pin from China, even an oversized Olympic pin from Thailand that featured their national mascot, a white elephant. You would think collectors would have eagerly traded for these colorful symbols of worldwide peace and brotherhood, but you'd be wrong. Nobody wanted foreign pins. (I'm not sure if they even wanted peace and brotherhood.) The one thing everyone, from hotel doormen to corporate CEOs, did want, however, was sponsor pins.

I discovered to my utter shock that most folks didn't know where Thailand was and couldn't have cared. They did, however, know about McDonald's (seven pins), ABC Television (five pins), Sports Illustrated (two pins), and M&M's (three pins), and it was the pins of these symbols of American consumerism that everybody in southern California was burning to get!

Olympic pin collecting got its start as a hobby at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games. The problem at Lake Placid was lots of interest but a relatively low number of pins in circulation. The U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympic Games didn't help the hobby, nor did the fact that the 1984 Winter Olympics were in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, but collectors got going in a hurry when the Olympic Games came to Los Angeles.

Peter Ueberroth, head of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, made history by leading the first Olympics in modern history that actually made money. Ueberroth generated close to $300 million in profit by telling everyone he met how broke he was. He used this technique, and the barter system, to get almost everything he needed to stage the Games for free. For barter, he traded the rights for firms to declare themselves “Official Sponsors” of the Games.

As a result, it seemed everybody in L.A. with a pickup truck and a ladder became a patron of the Olympics, and the first thing they usually did was to go out and make some pins to announce this fact. All of a sudden, Angelenos saw such oddities as: “The Official Garbage Company” (Waste Management, two pins), “The Official Parking Lot” (Systems Parking, one pin), “The Official Convenience Store” (7-Eleven, two pins), “The Official Bandage” (Ace, one pin), “The Official Bread” (Roman Meal, one pin), “The Official Bicycle Gear” (Campagnolo, four pins) — and where would we have been without “The Official Railroad” (Southern Pacific, one pin)?

In addition to these somewhat esoteric categories, you had the usual suspects: soft drinks (Coca-Cola, 177 pins), beer (Anheuser-Busch, nine pins), telecommunications (AT&T, eight pins) and cars (Buick, 20 pins). Add to these the companies and public agencies (FBI, LAPD, LAFD, CHP, RTD, SWAT, CALTRANS, collectively 11 pins) that used “1984 L.A. Summer Games” on their pins and you've arrived at well over 800 different pins, all begging to be collected.

After 12 months of wheeling, dealing and just plain pleading, I managed to end up with about 450 different pins with a street value of over $10,000. I'm embarrassed now to admit some of the lengths I went to in my collecting frenzy. (Like the time I went to an outcall massage agency to trade with the manager — who knew? I recall it struck me as odd that all his masseuses wore micro-skirts, had six-inch heels and called me “Honey.”)

The rarest pin I managed to snag was the oft-counterfeited “error pin” from Coca-Cola. The Holy Grail for all pinheads, this pin was so famous that Life magazine featured it in the special edition it published about the Games. The pin depicted Sam the Eagle, the official mascot of the Games, holding a Coke bottle in his talons, with the words “Have a Coke and a smile'' over his head. Problem was the Olympic mascot was forbidden from interacting with a sponsor's product, and to make matters worse, Coke had changed its tagline. Fewer than 150 of these pins exist and their value is estimated at $1,500 (considerably more than its weight in gold). I traded dearly for mine, giving up a framed set of Buick pins, as well as a framed set of Labatt Beer pins. My benefactor was the then-VP of marketing for Coca-Cola of Los Angeles, and he threw in a three-page, single-spaced, typed letter of authenticity on letterhead to seal the deal.

In ensuing Olympiads, the International Olympic Committee tightened their control on local organizing committees to avoid the complaint of over-commercialization of the Games. Said another way, they wanted more $40 million sponsors for The Olympic Program (TOP) sponsors and fewer “Official Portable Lighting Supplier” (Musco, one pin) relationships. I can't say that I blame them. After all, $40 million will buy a whole lot of portable lighting. It's just that I miss seeing esoteric companies catch the Olympic spirit and start marketing like the big guys. Most of these little companies did a better job of leveraging their sponsorship than the firms that spent the big bucks.

Personally, I think the Olympic Committee is missing a real treat (Hostess, three pins), but maybe they're just chicken (Foster Farms, one pin). Now is the time for all pinheads to tighten their belts (Levi's, two pins) and join together (United Airlines, two pins) to make their voices heard (Motorola, three pins). After all, if the Olympics is all about competition, what could get people more juiced (Minute Maid, one pin) than pin collecting?

Rod Taylor is senior VP of promotions for CoActive Marketing. Send your feedback to rtaylor@getcoactive.com.

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