Sport Marketing in Olympics 2024: Beyond Team Spirit

Every time the Olympics take place, social discussions heat up more than ever. The recent Paris Olympics not only featured intense and spectacular competitions among athletes from various countries but also served as an opportunity for brands to compete in sport marketing and connect with audiences worldwide.

To understand the significance and impact of the Olympics event on the global media/advertising landscape, let’s look at how brands are investing in their campaigns surrounding the event. One notable giant is Nike. According to Reuters, Nike revealed that its communications campaign for the 2024 Olympics is the most heavily invested campaign in many years for this sports brand. Although specific figures have not been disclosed, the brand has clearly expressed its desire to strongly stimulate demand for sports products following the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which were affected by the global pandemic.

Not only sports brands are participating in this advertising competition; the event has also attracted the attention of technology brands and luxury fashion labels. Ultimately, according to a recent report from Relo Metrics – an AI-based campaign effectiveness analytics company – the LVMH group “won” the brand coverage race, achieving a total media value post-event that was 17 times higher than the average content value for the entire year.

From the above examples, we can conclude that despite its controversies, the global sports event of the Paris 2024 Olympics remains a golden opportunity for brands to promote themselves to the mass public.

As competition among brands intensifies, it demands that they adopt smart and creative strategies to ensure their campaigns create a deep connection and do not fade into the crowd. Below is a summary from EloQ highlighting the prominent emerging trends that brands have effectively utilized in this relatively new field of sports marketing.

1. Approaching through gender equality values ​​

Gender equality is one of the important aspects promoted when it comes to organizing the Paris 2024 Olympics. The organizing committee has designed many activities and mechanisms to promote gender equality when participating in sports competitions. From designing the tournament logo to honor Marianne – a female role model that appears throughout many periods of France to the regulation of the number of male and female athletes participating in the same number, it clearly shows an open playground for everyone. In addition, the nature of sports is to constantly break limits, prejudices and set new records. Therefore, approaching and conveying messages related to breaking prejudices and aiming for gender equality is an extremely suitable strategy and ensures high connectivity for brands with the event.

A prominent example is the advertising campaign of Knix – a famous lingerie brand from Canada that did a great job of conveying a timely and meaningful message to the mass audience that is extremely relevant to the brand’s values. Specifically, the brand shocked the public with a 1-minute viral clip titled ‘Talk About Your Period & Get Paid. You In?’. With the appearance of former soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who also participated in the Olympics, the campaign attracted attention and called for changes in the reception of menstruation by female athletes in sports. Although menstruation is a normal physiological manifestation in women, it seems that no one dares to mention or refer to the difficulties and inconveniences related to menstruation caused by female athletes when competing and pursuing a sports career. Meanwhile, the reality is that 99% of athletes have competed on their period at an international competition, 75% fear leakage during competition, and over 64% feel uncomfortable discussing their period with their coach. Worse, many athletes choose to skip competition when they have their period. To break that silence, Knix has come up with a solution: paying $2,000 to any athlete who talks about their period when referring to the sport they play.

With its bold message and approach, the Knix brand has successfully made itself more prominent and remembered by many female athletes and the general audience as a brand that cares about empowering women.

2. Applying and honoring the cultural and historical values of countries

Mentioning global sports means mentioning the competition of athletes from different countries for national pride. In addition, because this year’s host country is France – one of the oldest fashion capitals in the world, the public’s attention to the fashion element of this event is even more focused. Taking advantage of this opportunity, many fashion brands have chosen a very direct approach through sponsoring and designing competition costumes for national representatives.

The costumes are designed not only to meet the high athletic needs of athletes but also to highlight the cultural characteristics that the athlete represents. By incorporating cultural and historical materials of countries into uniform designs, fashion brands have created connections not only in terms of function but also in terms of emotions for the audience.

Some of the famous brands that have sponsored national teams are: Ralph Lauren sponsors the US team, Berluti sponsors the French team, Lululemon sponsors the national team… The elements that these fashion houses use include flag colors (flag colors in the US and Canadian team uniforms), natural features (Canada’s maple leaf), cultural features (combining traditional costumes of the Mongolian or Haitian teams) or honoring historical victories (the US team’s space conquest achievements),…

Looking more broadly, the use of cultural and historical elements is not limited to competition uniforms. Chaumet – a French luxury jewelry and watch brand belonging to the LVMH group has surprisingly participated in the medal design process. Specifically, this brand not only cleverly exploited the outstanding features of France into the medal such as the image of the sun’s rays symbolizing the bright light because Paris is often called the city of light, but also included in the medal design about 0.04 pounds of iron pieces reclaimed from the Eiffel Tower – “real pieces of Parisian history”.

3. Leveraging the Personal Brands of Athletes

Not only within the framework of the 2024 Olympics, but increasingly, brands prefer to use athletes as influencers in product promotion. There are two basic reasons that can explain this trend. Athletes with high intensity of sports training, so a healthy and sporty body is one of the important factors that help attract the attention of the audience. In addition, athletes are said to spend most of their time practicing and competing, so there will be less risk of image risks, affecting the brand.

Within the framework of this year’s Olympics, there are many brands actively using the images and personal brands of athletes in product promotion. Notable among them is the technology giant Samsung. As a long-time Olympic sponsor, Samsung has once again made its mark with the new and impactful ‘Open Always Wins’ campaign. With a message that matches the theme of this year’s Olympics, Samsung has cleverly integrated its flagship products, the Galaxy Flip 6 and Fold 6, throughout the event’s activities.

To create global social media coverage, the brand has selected about 25 athletes from different sports and countries to become Team Samsung Galaxy – ambassadors for the campaign. The athletes will share about the difficulties in their sports pursuits and thereby connect the brand more with their fans. To make it more attractive, Samsung also presented a special medal called the “Openness Medal” to athletes who have been open to sharing their experiences overcoming challenges.

However, the most impressive strategy of the brand must be mentioned when combining Product Placement with Influencer Marketing in the Victory Selfie activity. Samsung sponsored all the latest technology phones for all athletes participating in the tournament and allowed them to “break the rules” by using their phones to take selfies to mark the moment of receiving the award. With that strategy, Samsung created a historic moment when South Korean and North Korean athletes took selfies together for the first time and created an explosive media effect. While the Korean people were once again proud of their country’s technology, international people were extremely excited by the moment of strong connection between the two countries with tense political situations. The photo has become a symbol of connection, openness and sharing joy in sports, bringing the value of the product beyond the meaning of a normal technology product.

Here is a summary of the prominent and noteworthy trends in the marketing strategies of brands throughout the 2024 Olympics. It is easy to see that the messages and approaches of brands have gone far beyond the team spirit theme often seen in previous sports marketing campaigns. As the competition becomes more fierce, the strategies of brands become more creative and explosive. With lessons from the 2024 Olympics, EloQ believes that the field of sports marketing will receive more attention and develop further in the future.

This is written by Thu Tran, Internal Branding intern at EloQ Communications. Currently, Thu is in charge of spreading the company brand to customers, contributing to creating a corporate culture of solidarity and enhancing EloQ’s position in the market. With a desire to pursue Branding Management, Thu’s research focuses on localizing media campaigns and the relationship of media and social issues.