City ads weight to Games bid

BY ANDREAS TZORTZIS in Berlin
and MICHAEL SAUL in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Come to New York - and get a high-powered international ad campaign. Free!

That was the pitch Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff gave Olympics officials in Berlin yesterday to land the 2012 Games, with the final decision looming just 80 days away.

"From the moment the city is awarded the Games, that creates seven years of opportunity - we are ready to start working with you right away," Doctoroff, founder of the city's Olympics bid, said at a major annual gathering of sporting officials. "Our city is one big stage, and in 2012, we will turn it over to you," Doctoroff vowed.

The idea is to create a "sports marketing council" - headed by NBA Commissioner David Stern - to offer free marketing assistance to every Olympic sport federation in the runup to the Games, and help them craft long-term plans to raise their visibility.

In an interview with the Daily News, Bloomberg said the city's bid boosters stressed how New York can generate publicity and money.

"New York is in a unique situation today to help every sport and every country in the Olympic movement," the mayor said. "There's a visibility in America that doesn't exist elsewhere."

Aside from formal presentations, Bloomberg worked the crowd yesterday around the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel, moving casually from circle to circle of Olympic officials. At one point, he stopped to plant a Eurostyle kiss on both cheeks of one official.

More than two dozen International Olympic Committee voting members attended the conference.

Craig Reedie, head of the British Olympic Association pooh-poohed the free-ads pitch, saying the sports market in the U.S. would drown out an Olympics campaign, adding, "It's very attractive to sports federations, [but] I also think it's extremely difficult to deliver."

Bloomberg also referenced the Sept. 11 attacks in his pitch. "Like the athlete who falls and gets back up, New Yorkers today are more determined than ever," he said.