2014 Winter Olympics marketing

A Soyuz rocket with Olympic livery. Its flight to the International Space Station, TMA-11M, was part of Sochi's torch relay.

The emblem of the 2014 Winter Olympics was unveiled in December 2009. While more elaborate designs with influence from Khokhloma were considered, organizers chose to use a more minimalistic and "futuristic" design instead, consisting only of typefaces with no drawn elements at all. The emblem was designed so that the "Sochi" and "2014" lettering would mirror each other vertically, "reflecting" the contrasts of Russia's landscape (such as Sochi itself, a meeting point between the Black Sea and the Western Caucasus).[1] Critics, including Russian bloggers, panned the logo for being too simplistic and lacking any real symbolism; Guo Chunning, designer of the 2008 Summer Olympics emblem Dancing Beijing, criticized it for its lack of detail, and believed it should have contained more elements that represented winter and Russia's national identity, aside from its blue color scheme and its use of .ru, the top-level domain of Russia.[1]

The Games' official slogan, Hot. Cool. Yours. (Жаркие. Зимние. Твои.), was unveiled on 25 September 2012, 500 days before the opening ceremony.[2] Presenting the slogan, SOC president Dmitry Chernyshenko explained that it represented the "passion" and heated competition of the Games' athletes, the contrasting climate of Sochi, and a sense of inclusion and belonging.[3][4]

The mascots of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

For the first time in Olympic history, a public vote was held to decide the mascots for the 2014 Winter Olympics; the 10 finalists, along with the results, were unveiled during live specials on Channel One. On 26 February 2011, the official mascots were unveiled, consisting of a polar bear, a snow hare, and a snow leopard. The initial rounds consisted of online voting among submissions, while the final round involved text messaging.[5][6][7]

A satirical mascot known as Zoich (its name being an interpretation of the stylized "2014" lettering from the Games' emblem as a cyrillic word), a fuzzy blue frog with hypnotic multi-coloured rings (sharing the colors of the Olympic rings) on his eyeballs and the Imperial Crown ("to remind about statehood and spirituality"), proved popular in initial rounds of online voting, and became a local internet meme among Russians, with some comparing it to Futurama's "Hypnotoad". Despite its popularity, Zoich did not qualify for the final round of voting, with its creator, political cartoonist Egor Zhgun, claiming that organizers were refusing to respect public opinion. However, it was later revealed that Zoich was deliberately planted by organizers to help virally promote the online mascot vote.[7][8]

Most Olympic brands choose to represent themselves with 3 or 4 "primary" colours which are often symbolic to the region, as well as "secondary" colours not found in the logo which are often found in less common symbols and/or graphics. Sochi, however, made a statement to symbolise the diversity of Russia, and used over 30 colours from all over the spectrum, in 90 different patterns, all put together in a graphic designed to resemble a quilt. 5 different colour families were used at different venues around the games; Red Orange and Yellow, Yellow and Green, Green and Blue, Blue and Purple, and Purple and Pink. Non-venue areas, as well as volunteer jackets and other public spaces featured all 5 colour families together in one.