10 London Summer Olympics Brands You Can't Escape

Acer
You won't see Apple(AAPL) and the iPad on the podium this Olympics, nor will you see Microsoft's(MSFT) Surface anywhere near the medals ceremony. Nope, that kind of honor is reserved for a company best known for making netbooks. You know, like laptops but smaller? Yeah, nobody else got it either, which is why Acer will be plugging away for its A510 Olympic Games Edition Tablet as it supplies all of the computing equipment for this year's games. Will it get average consumers to stop using "iPad" as a genericized tablet trademark or critics to stop using it as the reference point for every new tablet that comes along? Let's just say the athletes aren't the only ones dreaming big at these games.

Visa(V)
Sepia-toned athletic drama? Thousands of screaming fans? Morgan Freeman narrating it all? Yep, that's about par for Visa, which has been an Olympic sponsor for a quarter-century and has some idea of how this game is played. Go big, go global and go remind everyone that your credit card is accepted in all sorts of exciting and dramatic places around the world.

Panasonic(PC)
Yet another longtime Olympic sponsor with a flair for the dramatic, Panasonic is trying to drag Olympics watchers off the edge of their seats with its ads because it has no other choice. The visuals have to look crisp and colorful, their Viera sets have to look bigger than life and all of the above needs to convince you to run out and get one. Why? Because the 20-year Olympic partner is throwing around a whole lot of cash to work with NBC and present the Olympics in 3-D this year. We're not quite sure how that's going to work, as NPD Group says 3-D televisions are only about 10% of the whole HDTV market -- and two-thirds of the 3-D TVs out there still require costly shuttered glasses. At least the ads look pretty.