By DIANA RANSOM
When Ted Guggenheim decided to make and sell an Olympic-themed cowbell app for the iPhone, he knew it would be tough to get the word out.
Intellectual property law prevents Guggenheim, the president and chief executive of Rage Digital, a custom iPhone app maker in Boulder, Colo., from including the word “Olympics” anywhere on the app. And he can’t use the term as a keyword for customers searching Apple’s iTunes Store. “We didn’t want to get in anybody’s way,” Guggenheim says.
Anxious to cash in on Olympic fever—but unwilling to pay official sponsorship fees that can cost millions, even for smaller categories—many marketers are trying to play it both ways, with ads that imply an Olympics connection but stop safely short of mentioning the Games. This is always something of a tactic when the Olympics...
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February 3, 2010, 4:22 PM
Bringing ‘a Little More Cowbell’ to the Olympics
By LYNN ZINSER
If you ever thought the Olympics “could’ve used a little more cowbell,” there is now an iPhone app rushing to the rescue.
Cowbell2010, available on iTunes for 99 cents, turns an iPhone or an iPod Touch into a virtual cowbell, ringing loudly when the phone is shaken or the screen tapped. The cowbell on the screen is wrapped in the flag of the country of your choice, which also determines the menu language.
The cowbell is a tradition in Alpine skiing, where fans bring them to the slopes to signal support for skiers,...
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