Navigating through Olympic Marketing

Having tried, and failed, to explain any of the Olympic opening ceremonies to my children (admittedly I had a hard time following myself), I had an equally challenging time explaining the commercials.

The Challenge

We aren’t exactly a TV family. We aren’t an anit-TV family, but we don’t have it on regularly. It’s mostly an event related activity. So the fact that we watched a fair amount of the 2012 Olympics meant that the kids watched a lot of commercials. I struggled with some of it. Like why is Lance Armstrong drinking beer on his bike and why can’t we go to McDonalds more often.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), my young daughters only got the opportunity to watch a limited amount of primetime Olympics. The events that interested my aspiring gymnast and swimmer daughters weren’t on until after 9:00pm. I have found this to be true of most major sporting events. It’s no wonder why Nielsen reported that during the 2010 Winter Olympics, ratings among teenagers and young kids was 57% lower than the national average for primetime Olympic broadcasts. Busy, active kids can’t stay up until 10:30pm to watch their favorite sporting events!

Cross Platform Appeal

Keeping the young audience engaged this year seemed easier through social media. The 2012 Olympics marked the first time social media played such a major role in the broadcast.  Major brands, athletes, coaches and commentators all took to the Internet to congratulate, commiserate, and comment at each and every turn of the Olympic games.  This integrated conversation is a marketer’s dream — or nightmare. Audiences can watch Michael Phelps swim a race, see him in a commercial at the break, get his thoughts on how he performed, all within minutes – deeping the audience relationship with the Michael Phelps brand. Same holds try for big brands like Proctor and Gamble, Coke and Verizon. A recent Reuter’s article talks about the “growing second-screen appeal” that offers effective online branding opportunities for marketers.

Online Branding Matters

Over the years, it’s been a tough sell trying to communicate the value of online branding. The online market space has traditionally been seen as a direct response medium; meaning advertising money was spent to generate click throughs that would lead to action and/or sales. Online branding is an area that has been underdeveloped and seen as having little impact on a company’s overall brand. But the NBC and Twitter partnership offered dozens of tweets from athletes as well as other content, crossed promoted on both the Twitter and TV channels. It is also the first time Twitter served as an official commentator for a live event of that magnitude.