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Just six months after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics ended, it’s Olympics time again at NBCUniversal.
The Winter Olympics have started in Beijing, and NBCU’s marketing team is working to make sure that everyone who watched the Summer Games—which had been delayed for a full year because of the pandemic—returns for the next go-around.
“One of the most important things that we’ve done over the past six months is educating and informing people that the Winter Games are coming now in February, because it’s not within our culture as Americans to be thinking of back-to-back Olympics like this,” Jennifer Storms, the chief marketing officer of NBCUniversal entertainment and sports, told Adweek.
But there are also benefits to having two Olympics in such a tight timeframe: the ability capitalize on learnings from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and keeping that audience engaged.
“The proximity of these Olympics have given us that great opportunity to gain the insights and the understanding as we walked in to the Winter Olympics,” said Storms. Those insights include who consumed content during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics through CRM (customer relationship management) efforts.
“We were able to capture people that were engaging with us in Tokyo and kept them talking to us over the last 180 days,” said Storms. “That’s been a luxury, because normally we wait a couple of years and then we’re talking about the Olympics to them in the lead-up in that year prior.”
Bringing the Games to consumers
NBCUniversal came up with multiple activations and experiences to keep these viewers engaged across the country throughout the last six months.
“Even prior to Tokyo, one of the larger challenges we have in marketing in general, and especially what we like to do around the Olympics, is we like to bring the Olympics directly to consumers, because Americans are not able to necessarily always fly to that global location,” said Storms. “We like to actually bring the experience of the Olympics, to activations and to surprise and delight moments within the United States.”
And while restrictions around the pandemic may have limited NBCUniversal’s ability to do just that, the marketing team still found a way to bring the Games to life across America with three major activations: Rings Across America, Snow in LA and Epic Countdown.
NBCUniversal first debuted Rings Across America ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, featuring a portable 13-foot-high replica of the five interlocking Olympic rings—which sit on the flatbed of a tractor-trailer—traveling around the country. “It was such a great experience for people to be able to touch the Olympics to have that access and to feel like they are physically part of it,” said Storms.
The rings wrapped up their tour last week in Texas, taking a different route than during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as it visited more of the country’s southern half.
In a second activation, NBCUniversal did the near-impossible: made it snow in Santa Monica, Calif.
As part of NBCUniversal’s cross-promotional Once in a Lifetime campaign for Super Bowl 56, airing Feb. 13 on NBC and Peacock, and the Winter Olympics, Al Roker and the Today Show created a “snowy wonderland” at the Santa Monica Place Mall. The group used 12 machines to blast artificial snow from the roof, and NBCUniversal debuted the activation during Monday’s Today broadcast.
Epic Countdown, another cross-promotional activation, began in New York around the holidays before traveling around the country. The promotion brings Super Bowl 56 and the Winter Olympics together in a snow globe, designed to allow consumers to capture their own video and social moments.
Cross-platform promotion
NBC Sports and NBCUniversal sibling Universal Pictures also teamed up for a trio of 60-second spots—one focusing on each of the three Olympians (Shaun White, Mikaela Shiffrin and Nathen Chen) to promote the Winter Games and the upcoming Jurassic World sequel. Those will lead up to a two-minute spot featuring all three athletes, set to premiere during Friday’s Opening Ceremony coverage.
The company utilized its properties across its broadcast and cable portfolios, creating custom integrations and promotions to keep the games top of mind for viewers, including a curling segment on The Voice and a Project Runway Olympic themed episode.
Other custom integrations include a CNBC Closing Bell segment, “Any Moment Could Be History” and an “Extreme Drama” segment during CNBC’s Shark Tank rebroadcasts. Amerca’s Got Talent host Terry Crews stars in a series of Olympics promos, including a spot highlighting figure skater Nathan Chen.
NBCUniversal has also been running custom promotions across Bravo, E! and Syfy, including a “Who Would Be Your Crew?” segment on Below Deck and a take on Resident Alien “(Re)learn How to Be Human” Winter Olympics edition.
‘Key nights’ for consumers
A huge priority for Storms and her team is to drive viewers to the Thursday’s first night of NBC primetime coverage ahead of Friday’s Opening Ceremony, both of which are “key nights,” for the company, she said.
“We know people come into the Olympics from the beginning and a large part of that is the spectacle of the Opening Ceremony,” said Storms. “It provides a great platform and opportunity when you start so large; you’re keeping a really nice consumption level across the games. We’ll push as hard as we can at the beginning because that’s the place where we want to get people to.”
Attracting viewers from the beginning also provides a secondary benefit for NBCUniversal in that it provides promotion for its other platforms, including Peacock, which is livestreaming all of NBCUniversal’s Winter Olympics coverage as part of NBCU’s efforts to grow subscribers for its Premium tier.
“When we push people from the start, we’re then able to navigate them to all the platforms after that,” said Storms. “The best thing is the simplicity. Bring them in on that first night of competition and Opening Ceremony and then let our production navigate you to the sports and the various telecasts that you want to watch.”
The steady reminder of the upcoming Games also helps ensure that the company can deliver for its marketing clients shelling out hundreds of millions in Olympics ads.
So far, nearly 100 advertisers are lined up for the Winter Olympics, which newly promoted president, NBC advertising sales and partnerships Dan Lovinger said is on par with where NBC Sports was at this point four years ago. That includes 40 new advertisers.
