Now that the Super Bowl is history, sports marketers will be focusing their attention on the next edition of the Olympic Games, which will be held in 2026 in Italy—specifically in Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The marketers and their PR arms should prepare a “what if we have to change our Olympic plans” program, because marketers have been forced to do so in recent Olympics. And the possibility of their having to do so again always exists. (Even though the Los Angeles Summer Olympics are four years away, there have already been protests against staging them in The City of Angels.)
We’ve now had two successive Summer Olympics, the Tokyo games from 2021 and the recently concluded 2024 Paris Olympics, and one Winter Olympics, from 2014, that has provided lessons that sponsors and PR practitioners should remember.
Tokyo and Sochi:
- There were protests against holding the Olympic in Tokyo for fear that it would facilitate the spread of Covid-19 during the Pandemic.
- In Sochi, there were protests against Russia’s anti-LGBT laws.
- Sponsors of both Olympics had to curtail their marketing plans because of the protests.
The lessons: Unforeseen circumstances might force brands to ditch their long-planed promotional and PR programs. Thus, brands must always have back-up plans that can be used.
Paris:
- An important thing for brands that spend many millions of dollars to have the right to say “Proud Sponsor” is to remember that gaining positive earned media coverage for brand promotions in major general-interest print pubs and on TV prior to the Paris games was largely non-existent. Media coverage was dominated by stories] of bribes in awarding contracts, terrorists’ threats, labor unrest, anti-Olympic protests and the possibility of boycotts by countries opposed to the International Olympic Committee’s decision to permit Russian and Belarus athletes to compete.
- Because there is little interest in the Olympics by U.S. media until shortly before the athletic competitions commence, (except in trade pubs), and even less interest after the games conclude, it’s difficult for a brand to obtain positive earned media coverage on sports outlets.
But there is a solution
Positive earned media regarding sponsors’ promotions are difficult, but not impossible to attain if PR practitioners, instead of exclusively targeting sports writers, approach the Olympics as if it is a marketing campaign, (which for brand sponsors it is), and focus on business and marketing journalists, as I’ve done many times when honchoing mega sports events. That’s why every Olympic PR account team should include an individual who understands the needs of business reporters, which are different from those of most sports journalists.
The difficulty of obtaining positive earned media for sponsors’ promotions is why the Olympic Games are not my first recommendation when a client asks me to recommend an international sports marketing tie-in that also will generate substantial earned media in the U.S.
Even though I believe the Olympics is the most important of all sports events, if a client asked me to recommend an international sports marketing publicity-oriented program I would suggest, in this order, an association with baseball, basketball and football, because those sports are covered year-round in the U.S and some teams are followed internationally since the leagues regularly schedule games to be played in various countries outside of the U.S. With a little thinking outside the trite box, it’s possible to craft an international program pinpointing specific countries without the restraints that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) puts on its sponsors and athletes.
Because there are so many foreign born athletes playing for American teams, a baseball, basketball or football international sports marketing publicity program can be built around individual athletes n Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa, providing clients with an opportunity to construct a regional or international publicity and marketing program without spending the big bucks that the IOC requires of an entity.
Sponsors of the Olympics say no international event can compare to the Olympics. But not all marketing experts believe that the price of becoming an Olympic sponsor is worth the cost. Some believe that a more varied marketing strategy is more efficient than one that counts eyeballs.
For the Paris Olympics, published reports said a: 30 TV prime time spot ranged between $750, 000 to $850, 000, a ridiculous cost, in my opinion, since the price assumes that a brand’s commercial will be seen by viewers who never leave the couch to see who is at the door, get a snack or go to the bathroom.
An article on the Marketing Architects website said, in part, “Measuring the true impact of Olympic sponsorships remains difficult, making it hard to justify the investment for many brands… and “for most brands, a balanced approach including both high-profile events and consistent, everyday marketing efforts will likely yield the best results.”
And a May Financial Times article said, in part, “Young people, say advertisers, are not watching the Olympics with anything like the enthusiasm of previous generations.
“The biggest source of concern, though,” said the article “is that the Olympics can no longer deliver on the billions-of-eyeballs promise, particularly among the under-35s. The IOC may imagine it is solving that problem by introducing skateboarding and breakdancing to the games, but advertisers know modern audience attention takes an awful lot of grabbing from an extremely fickle environment.”
So my advice to brands looking for a sports tie-in is to heed the advice my mother told me when my first romance went sour. “There are plenty of fish in the seas,” she comforted me. There are also plenty of sports marketing opportunities.
And the same is true about the Super Bowl.
