NBCUniversal on Friday (July 26) will begin broadcasting the 2024 Paris Olympics, an event that also serves because the media conglomerate’s latest example of the way it is approaching promoting within the streaming era.
The company is on pace for an all-time Olympic record and set to surpass $1.2 billion in promoting sales — including $350 million from recent advertisers — and has worked for months, if not longer, to develop bespoke brand integrations for major marketers.
“We’re in a position to create these very organic, unique integrations for every [partner] that’s authentic to either their brands or their initiative that they are trying to perform and sits rather well across our networks, streaming platforms and, in some cases, our social partners,” said Dan Lovinger, president of Olympic and Paralympic Partnerships at NBCUniversal.
The company will exhibit certainly one of these integrations during live coverage of the opening ceremony, which is able to include — for the primary time in Olympics history — a commercial-free hour sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company, Delta, Lilly, Toyota Motor Corp., Visa and Xfinity. Instead of traditional ads, brand logos for every sponsor (or “Olympic Ring Holder”) can have a presence onscreen, rotating in 10-minute increments.
This 12 months’s opening ceremony will happen not in a stadium but on the River Seine, featuring a four-mile-long flotilla of nearly 90 boats that may carry 1000’s of athletes. The unique set-up presented a special opportunity to balance a once-in-a-lifetime visual with ad needs.
“We created a win-win. We’re not eliminating advertisers — we’re giving them a special role,” Lovinger said. “The advertisers can be known to the viewer and we’ll give them credit, however the viewer will even have the option to remain with the spectacle, which can be implausible.”
Major brands go for gold
Beyond the opening ceremony, advertisers have many opportunities to succeed in highly engaged audiences, like throughout the 13 nights of prime-time coverage that may show a 30-minute key event with just one 60-second industrial pod. Ads are more practical in an Olympic environment, in response to NBCU research, and could be further boosted through the use of creative that’s “Olympicized” with athletes or Olympic themes and creating custom content.
“When [advertisers] do all of those things… that is when impact really explodes for them. They see massive lift in message memorability, brand likability and search,” Lovinger said.
Coca-Cola is not any stranger to the Olympics, having supported every edition of the games since 1928. The beverage marketer can have a presence across linear and digital channels, including NBC, USA and Telemundo. Plus, Coca-Cola will sponsor the Gold Zone, a live whip-around show on Peacock, and co-create custom content for Peacock and social channels like TikTok because it reaches out to Gen Z.
“At The Coca-Cola Company, we imagine in the true magic that may occur when the world comes together, so being an element of this spectacular presentation of the opening ceremony on NBC is an amazing opportunity to rejoice and share those unifying and galvanizing moments,” said Robin Triplett, vp of integrated marketing at Coca-Cola North America, in a press release.
Fellow Olympic Ring Holder and official partner of Team USA Delta can also be partnering with NBCU in a wide range of ways. The airline helped kick off the long road to the Olympics last June by flying contestants on “Top Chef: World All-Stars” to Paris for a quick-fire challenge alongside Team USA athletes. Delta continued to assist NBCU construct buzz on the “Today” show by celebrating the 100-day-out moment in April and unveiling a custom Team USA aircraft livery in May.
In partnership with Delta, NBCU will run a 22-minute commercial-free documentary in regards to the American men and girls who risked and sacrificed their lives throughout the Normandy landings. The airline will even sponsor Gold Zone, serve because the presenting sponsor of the Medal Count and run its Team USA-starring campaign throughout the games.
Beyond linear
As TV continues to shift from linear to streaming, Peacock stays a key component of NBCU’s offering to consumers and advertisers, especially because it looks to show TV right into a performance marketing channel.
The company unveiled several updates and enhancements to Peacock at its One24 tech event in March, and the platform allows advertisers to focus on in a way that can’t be done on linear. Plus, the increased “shelf space” of a platform that may eventually have near 7,000 hours of Olympics content allows viewers to program their very own TV time, creating affinity groups that advertisers are involved in, Lovinger explained.
Peacock revenue increased 28% to $1 billion last quarter, per an earnings report released this week, narrowing its loss to $348 million on the quarter, down from $651 million a 12 months ago, demonstrating how maturity for many streaming platforms continues to be a ways off.
Along with its own streaming platform, NBCU has teamed with Meta, Overtime, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube to develop a Paris Creator Collective, giving 27 creators “unprecedented on-the-ground access” to create custom content on the Olympics that may mix sports highlights with complementary content around food, fashion and Paris itself. The collective builds on insights gleaned from the last decade-plus of integrate social media to have interaction with younger consumers who eat content in their very own way.
“We’ll reach more young people in 17 days of the Olympics than lots of the normal younger cable networks will reach in a 12 months,” Lovinger said.
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