Brands, Expect the Unexpected When Participating in Olympics

The Olympic Games Paris 2024 have arrived; a two-and-a-half-week festival of sport and an enormous stage for many of the world’s biggest brands. Poised to be the most-watched summer games in years, in the marketing world, it will be all Olympics all the time for the next few weeks. Prepare for the thrill of brand victory and the agony of brand defeat.

The Olympics are a marketing high-wire act. There’s a lot at stake and getting it wrong can be expensive and painful. Here are a few areas Olympic marketers should plan for in case things go awry.

Prepare for the pull of polarization

Even marketing without any purposeful left- or right-leaning position is at risk of being pulled or pushed in one direction or another. Ads might be perceived as too woke for some or too traditional for others. Olympic marketers will need to be prepared, and not surprised, if their marketing faces the perils of polarization.

Brands should conduct scenario planning, thinking through how extreme interpretations of their marketing efforts might play out and how the brand would respond. It’s impossible to consider every polarized point of view, but an effort to put some forethought into potential scenarios could be helpful if a brand suddenly finds itself in the spotlight.

Navigate known controversies

There’s plenty of known controversy going into the games. There are heightened geopolitical tensions. There are Parisians concerned about the negative impact of overtourism on the city. There are concerns about pollution in the Seine, now apparently under control, that could jump back to dangerous contamination levels with too much rain. Navigating all this will require finesse and brands must keep a very close eye on how things evolve throughout the games.

Smart brands will pay close attention to the intersection of what’s happening in the wider world and what’s happening in the field of play. Given the global nature of the games and the fluid nature of many of the potential controversies, it will require brands to be vigilant throughout the Games.

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