Team GB is the brand name used since 1999 by the British Olympic Association (BOA) for their British Olympic team. The brand was developed after the nation's poor performance in the 1996 Summer Olympics, and is now a trademark of the BOA. It is meant to unify the team as one body, irrespective of each member athlete's particular sport. Officially, the team is the "Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team", although athletes from Northern Ireland may opt to compete under the auspices of the Olympic Federation of Ireland instead. History The British Olympic Association's director of marketing, Marzena Bogdanowicz, felt that the official and abbreviated names of the Great Britain Olympic team were a mouthful. She first thought of the 'Team GB' concept in 1996 or 1997, and said: "I went to the games in 1996 and the logo at the time was just the lion and the rings, but we weren't strong enough as a brand to just be a lion and the rings. So coming back I wanted to find something that was less of a mouthful, and also had that team feel. We looked at the options and came up with Team GB". The name was trademarked in September 1999 at the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO). Branding strategy The BOA state that there "is only one Olympic team from Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Team GB. There is not an Olympic swimming team or Olympic rowing team. The individual sports join to become Team GB, the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team." The Team GB brand was used as part of a licensing and merchandising strategy following the BOA's athletes success at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. Bogdanowicz stated that the BOA wanted to "cement the Team GB brand in the minds of the British public". Calls for renaming The team is officially known as the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team. In June 2009, Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Sports Minister Gregory Campbell suggested that the name should be changed as the abbreviated form was not inclusive enough as it "excludes, and indeed alienates, the people of Northern Ireland". Campbell's successor, Nelson McCausland, also suggested that an alternative name be found. A significant complication is that the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI), established in 1920, as the 'Irish Olympic Council', but not admitted by the IOC until June 1922,