NBC Sports Preps Marketing Marathon: 2 Olympics, Super Bowl

Nearly a year ago today, the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were postponed for a year because of the worsening Covid-19 pandemic. Now that concerns and speculation about the status of the Tokyo Games has mostly dissipated—with the International Olympic Committee recommitting to holding them as scheduled this summer, during its virtual session on Wednesday—NBCUniversal’s sports division is preparing to fire the starting gun on its own once-in-a-lifetime marketing event. That's because NBC Sports Group’s Olympics marketing won’t end after the conclusion of the Summer Games, which run from July 23 to Aug. 8. Instead, the company will transition straight into a new round of Olympic promotions as the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing—which NBCUniversal also has exclusive broadcast rights to—begin less than six months later. As if that's not enough, there will be yet another massive sports telecast: Super Bowl 56, set for Feb. 6 on NBC. “For NBCUniversal, this will happen once in a lifetime,” said Jennifer Storms, CMO of entertainment and sports at NBCUniversal. “The Winter Olympics and Super Bowl 56 are just 180 days after the Tokyo games, and they're both following a pandemic—and all of this is happening at the exact same time. It’s going to be epic.” 'The light at the end of the tunnel' In mid-April, NBCUniversal will begin to ramp up marketing for the Tokyo Games across all of its networks. That campaign will focus on national and international unity, athletic excellence, and it will emphasize the Olympics as a source of entertainment. Storms’ team settled on those themes after commissioning a research study in December from the market research firm Maru/Matchbox around Olympic sentiment and what feelings consumers associated with the games to inform their creative decisions. The results helped the team overcome their concerns about striking the right tone in their marketing after a year that included not only a deadly pandemic but also national protests against police brutality and racial injustice. “'Do you present joy and happiness when you know that a lot of Americans are struggling?'” Storms said. “We struggled with that question until the research came back and said, 'This is the light at the end of the tunnel.' This is what joy and happiness is for [consumers]: being able to watch these Olympics happen.” In some ways, the marketing messages indicate a return to normalcy for the Olympics, which have long leaned on messages of unity and athletic prowess in past games. But for NBC Sports Group, which spent last spring scrambling to dismantle and scrap activations and experiential events that had already begun rolling out for the originally scheduled 2020 games, it’s been anything but normal. Behind the scenes, the team realized the cadence and intensity of their 2021 marketing would have to account for the proximity of the other sports tentpoles penciled in on the calendar. “We saw how close the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl were, and in between that, an entire NFL season, a Nascar playoffs and Premier League and all these major sports,” Storms recalled. “That's literally when we started the planning last year, saying, 'There needs to be a big idea around the 180-day plan.'” Shooting safely during Covid-19 Heading into the summer games, the group salvaged some existing creative put together ahead of last year's postponement, including footage from a November 2019 West Hollywood photoshoot with athletes together in the same studio space. That existing footage will be updated with more recent shoots in Covid-safe conditions, featuring only one athlete at a time: a recent Houston-based shoot with the U.S.’ most-decorated gymnast, Simone Biles. This involved a 10-angle camera setup as the gymnast performs some of her signature routines to give audiences a slow-motion view of her athletic abilities. The footage of Biles offers a peek into how NBC Sports Group will approach filming for the upcoming Winter Olympics. Because a West Hollywood-like group shoot is unlikely and unfeasible ahead of the Winter Games in Beijing, NBCUniversal will instead film athletes on location in their training facilities and piece that footage together to create one-of-a-kind materials. “It’s a much larger, resource-intensive lift from our standpoint, for sure,” Storms said. Marketing for the Summer Olympics will accelerate on April 14 when NBCUniversal will begin the 100 Days Out countdown to the Opening Ceremony. At that point, all of NBC Sports Group and NBCUniversal channels will begin promoting the games—as well as dozens of advertising partners—to drive interest in the Tokyo Olympics, which had surpassed $1.25 billion in ad sales before they were postponed a year ago. While Olympics marketing always starts early, extensive messaging often takes a hiatus between competitions. The closeness of these Summer and Winter Games, though, means that Storms and her team won’t have a chance to press pause. “Consumers are used to the flame extinguishing toward the end of the Games in Tokyo, but that Olympic flame is actually going to burn brighter,” Storms said. “It will be a consistent through line and conversation with consumers from Tokyo all the way to the Winter Olympic and the Super Bowl.”

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Kelsey Sutton

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Kelsey Sutton