The Osaka 2008 Olympic Bid Supporting Organization is a group of fifteen members, ages 18-20 years, founded four years ago by then 16-year-old Kazuyuki Terao.
Members of the group are students, and part-time and full-time workers with interests varying from welfare and sports to culture and fashion.
Activities include attending festivals to set up tents and booths. Whever there’s an event, the Osaka 2008 Bid Committee asks for the group’s help.
Terao says the Osaka Bid Committee’s PR doesn’t appeal to younger people and criticizes the effectiveness of placing posters and logos all over the city, calling it questionable.
There are those who say that enthusiasm for the bid is lacking and taking Terao’s criticism into account, the perceived lack of enthusiasm could be attributed to the method and content of information targeted towards the younger population.
But Terao considers this when organzing events. The supporting organization held an event for local elementary and junior high school students attracting about 300 people.
Terao thinks that the Bid Committee should provide more relevant information to the mass media and says “it seems the press releases are issued to say that a logo has been created, or a poster, but this doesn’t really convey what is being done to promote the bid for the Games”.
Terao says “only the International Olympic Committee can decide if we win or lose in terms of whether we become the candidate city or not”. The appeal of the bid for him lies in its commitment to the campaign itself. In the future he hopes to broaden communication between all the privately established supporting organizations and is preparing to add even more momentum to the process of bidding for the Olympics.
