How Levelwing Tackled Its Olympic-Sized Problem

The only sure bet about the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo is uncertainty about what happens next. Normally, brands would plan for many years and months to build out their highly visible and expensive sponsorship deals and they could count with fair expectation the steps of the process and the results. This year, the process for brands to engage, and athlete participation, are consistently in question. Even a surefire bet like Simone Biles turned out not to be a slam dunk. Turbulent nature of Olympics advertising Levelwing, an independent agency for nearly two decades, may best represent the foundation of the turbulent nature of Olympics advertising support for its client, rubber and tire manufacturing giant Bridgestone. The agency is well-versed in sports-related initiatives, having developed content and campaigns for 14 consecutive Super Bowls, as well as INDYCAR, NASCAR, the NFL, NHL and PGA among others. This year is the agency’s third consecutive Olympics campaign, with the fourth, the Winter Olympics, on the near horizon—a mere six months away. When planning for the Olympics, both Levelwing and Bridgestone (one of 14 worldwide Olympics partners) developed an approach deeply rooted in digital channels. The agency is responsible for the overall Olympics content, digital strategy and live content production as well as social media for the brand. The Olympics Is Showing Its Age as Major Brands Question Whether It’s Worth Advertising In Back in 2019, during planing for the 2020 Olympics, athlete representation was set and the plan was all coming together nicely. Since then, the world changed. In April of this year, a central figure of Team Bridgestone's athlete representation, Jordan Burroughs—one of the most decorated athletes in the history of wrestling, a gold medalist, World Champion and a favorite to win gold in Tokyo—failed to qualify after being beaten for the first time ever in U.S. Trials. Out of control Around the same time, it became obvious that another Bridgestone athlete, golfer Bryson DeChambeau—one of the more controversial and popular athletes on the green—may make the U.S. Olympic Team; he ultimately did. However, in true theme of the world around us, on Sunday July 25th, two days after the opening ceremonies, DeChambeau was forced to withdraw from the Olympics after a positive Covid-19 test. “Planning for any type of content where the brand is not fully in control of every single element requires tremendous thought and healthy flexibility,” Steve Parker Jr., CEO of Levelwing, tells Adweek. “We’ve always believed that a fundamentals-first approach is key to success and greatly aids to the pivots of the unexpected when they happen. And they frequently happen.” For this year’s Olympics, Parker feels that brand gold will be achieved, just not in the initial manner intended. In the case of both Jordan Burroughs and Bryson DeChambeau, nimble pivots were required. With DeChambeau, Parker emphasizes, “the original intent was to develop content specifically for digital and social media, which meant bypassing the typical large production shoot. However, during the planning stages, DeChambeau’s possibility of Olympic involvement greatly increased. Bridgestone, in turn recognized the incredible opportunity to have a major face already serving as a brand ambassador and redesigned the media buy to upgrade from digital only to linear TV as well. “We took a planned social-first content shoot with Bryson and turned it into a combined social-first and full linear commercial spot that would have activated first during the Olympics,” Parker explained. Unfortunately, a last minute Covid-19 diagnosis with DeChambeau derailed those Olympic plans. Yet, the approach to the creation of this spot and content would deliver with a gold medal outcome. Half-day shoot DeChambeau is one of the larger golf stars. He’s known as the “The Scientist” because he graduated with a degree in physics and is famous for his unconventional approach to the game of golf. Levelwing storyboarded three unique 30-second campaign concepts, working with the Bridgestone brand team to approve them in a span of less than 4 days, and then filmed in only half a day. Conversely, historical linear campaigns typically require brands to spend months of versioning to get a 2- to 3-day shoot dialed to perfection for a 30-second spot. Once many of these final linear commercial shoots happen, the content often times isn’t leveraged or activated on a 360-degree view including social assets and other accompanying content. Challenges always happen The bottom line, according to Parker, is that the combination of social media thinking and a contrarian view of campaign creation fully aligned with the flexible and fundamentals-first approach that led to the production of great content and a global linear spot, while also saving the brand money. “We are very proud of that because our approach is not a normal approach in today’s environment,” he said. “It’s really important to me that we fully highlight our thought and approach and Bridgestone’s commitment to being fundamentally sound at all times to perform when it matters and overcome challenges when they happen, because challenges always happen.” Burroughs was out of the competition before it started despite a year of planning and content shoots. Thankfully, again due to fundamentals-first planning, the content captured with Jordan in the year leading up to the Olympics was substantial enough and broad enough to be recut in a way that overcame the obvious challenge of him not being at the Olympics, Parker added. And although the DeChambeau spot will not air during the Olympics, it will still execute internationally. "This is, in fact, a great Olympics story. It’s always unwritten, it happens in a blink of the eye and requires super strong fundamentals to overcome," Parker says. "It’s these moments we all remember anyway, and this, too, will be one, or a few, of those moments.” What brands intended for their Olympic sponsorships

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Larissa Faw