By Giles Ivey

"The excitement is growing so much I think the Geirger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go 'zoink' off the scale" - London Mayor Boris Johnson

The 2012 Olympics are here - and by the time you read this, it should be fairly obvious who many of the winners are. For the athletes, it will come down to going for gold. For brand sponsors, success will be measured in reach and recall metrics. And for the International Olympic Committee success is having as few embarrassing glitches go public as possible.

But there are plenty of losers this year too – and we're not talking about the human rights case of everyone at the Olympic Park having to drink Coke instead of Pepsi. We are witnessing a collective and massive missed opportunity in advertising this year as nothing about the games is left to chance.

By giving some brands a temporary monopoly, Olympic organisers have killed the Darwinian energy that compels advertisers to outdo their competitors, because there are none. And no competitors means no reactive strategies, no guerrilla tactics, and worst of all, no creative spontaneity. Every sponsor at the Olympics is guaranteed success metrics, but they're robbing themselves of those "YES!" moments that galvanise the next steps of creative thinking.

Read the full article: "The Olympics are killing advertiser's creativity" on the SAY Daily blog.