Brands are turning to alternative platforms for Olympic activations

The Olympics is expected to be one of the biggest broadcast events of the summer. But for many younger viewers, they might spend more time watching the competition and the content that surrounds it on social platforms like TikTok than on the TV screen.

That means that the organizing committee itself, as well as the advertisers looking to target audiences interested in the games, are preparing for an Olympic-sized presence on social media to accompany the competition on NBC. In other words, expect Olympics-related ads, content, and shoulder programming to descend on just about every screen ahead of the Opening Ceremony.

“It’s no longer enough to make a beautiful TV ad and put an official logo at the end of it,” Rahul Titus, global head of influence at Ogilvy, told Marketing Brew. “You need to make sure you’re looking at it as a connected ecosystem, where you’re activating your athletes on the ground, on social media, pre the event, post-event, and that’s a much more complicated and complex system. Obviously, there’s beauty in it and it’s a very high-reward system if you get it right, but it’s tougher.”

“The TikTok Olympics”

The TikTokification of the Olympics isn’t limited to advertisers. The organizing committee for Paris 2024, for example, is using social channels like TikTok to amplify its messaging around the games, according to Augustin Pénicaud, VP of Havas Play, Havas’s sports and entertainment division that has been working with the organizing committee and several official brand partners. While TV remains central to the Olympic experience, “you cannot be solely and only on TV,” he said.

National teams also realize the power of branching beyond broadcast. Team Great Britain inked an official partnership with TikTok, Team Canada and brand partner Lululemon dropped their Paris 2024 kits on the platform, and Team USA first released a promotional film across social. Even Olympics broadcaster NBCUniversal is giving TikTok, Snap, YouTube, Meta, and Overtime front-and-center access to the competition and is promoting the games through its own socials.

Social media isn’t exactly a new ballgame for brands, but compared to past Olympics, they’re leaning further in, according to Titus.

“I’m calling it the first TikTok Olympics,” he said, later adding that “it’s quite refreshing to see that whole ecosystem being fully utilized for the first time.”

While official sponsorships and broadcast ads are still valuable, even major brands with access to those assets are increasingly embracing social. Coca-Cola, an official Olympic partner that’s running a 360-campaign including TV ads, is more focused on social than during prior Olympics, in part because of the platform’s reach among Gen Z audiences, according to Robin Triplett, VP of North America integrated marketing.

“We have several brands showing up…and each brand has its own social voice and audience that we can engage with during this special event,” Triplett said in an email. “Social media also provides more opportunity to quickly act upon the events taking place, cheer on our incredible athlete partners, and engage directly with the consumer in real time.”

Athleta, which is running its first-ever linear TV ad during the Olympics and is activating on the ground in Paris, is also using social in a “significant way,” CMO Ilona Aman said. Team USA sponsors like Reese’s and Core Power are also stretching their campaigns across platforms including linear, digital, social, and audio.

Flood the Seine

Beyond TikTok, brands are turning to emerging media platforms such as newsletter and podcast companies that create sports content to help expand the reach of their Olympic efforts, and several of those companies’ executives told Marketing Brew that they’ve experienced a boost in revenue thanks to the interest.

Podcast company Acast has fielded some recent advertiser interest in sports-related podcasts like The Mid-Point with Gabby Logan, according to Tom Roach, Acast’s commercial strategy director for the UK. And New York Times-owned The Athletic, which is covering the Olympics for the first time, began having conversations with brands about sponsorships a couple of years ago, with renewed brand interest a few months out from the games, according to Chief Commercial Officer Seb Tomich; Nike and MassMutual are sponsoring some of the publication’s Olympics content, and there are several other brands with campaigns that have yet to go live, he said.

Despite the interest, competition for pitching brands about Olympic campaigns has been stiff among media companies, Tomich said. “It wasn’t just us versus ESPN on every pitch,” he said.

The Gist, a sports media brand started in 2017, is working on Olympic campaigns with brands like Nike and Canadian Tire, and is partnering with Adidas to create content on the ground in Paris, according to co-founder Jacie deHoop. Just Women’s Sports, a women’s sports-focused media company, is covering the games beyond its site and newsletter to position itself as an “easily accessible second-screen experience” on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, and its podcast network, Jackie Caldwell, its head of content, said in an email.

For much of the company’s audience, “we’re the only sports content that they consume,” deHoop said. “They’re going to be scrolling through their feeds during the day, they might listen to the podcast, and that’s going to be the Olympic content that they consume. They’re not necessarily going to watch a broadcast, which is just wild, but we definitely factor that in.”

Whether it’s working with sports media companies or creating social content, the options offer advertisers creative ways to get involved with the Olympics with or without official ties to the rings, Joe Caporoso, president of sports and entertainment media company Team Whistle, which has been working with Snapchat and Meta to cover the games, and selling sponsorships since late last year, said.

“Everyone’s going to be talking about the Olympics in the back half of the summer,” he said. “It only comes every four years…so you don’t want to sit that out.”