How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending December 24, 2009.

National News

• The Globe and Mail quoted marketing prof Lindsay Meredith in a story on the new VANOC website that allows people to resell 2010 Winter Olympics tickets—with a 20-per-cent handling fee to VANOC. Said Meredith: “The service fee is a pretty healthy markup. Are they making money? You can bet your boots they are. The technology isn’t that fancy. They really want to eliminate, as best they can, the unseemliness of a whole bunch of scalpers standing outside Olympic events, trying to sell tickets at ridiculous amounts of money.”

• Meredith was also in a Vancouver Sun story on NBA basketball star Steve Nash buying Fitness World to add to his Steve Nash Fitness Club business. “What we call this is brand-line extension. You always want to have a logical brand extension, so Fitness World is a perfect link for [Nash]. It makes obvious sense.” By way of Canwest News Service, the story also ran in the Montreal Gazette.

BC News

• Marketing prof Lindsay Meredith appeared on GlobalTV in a story about Coca-Cola, an official sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics, accusing Pepsi of a “distasteful” promotional campaign. It features car-flags with Pepsi’s logo beside the Team Canada hockey logo. Pepsi said it is merely supporting Team Canada at the upcoming World Junior Hockey Championships.  Meredith noted there is no mention of the Olympics. The campaign might be “close to the edge”, but “Pepsi is getting very good mileage out of this.”