Peacock Gets an Olympic-Size Promotion a Year Later Than Expected

Olympic athletes aren't the only ones who have been counting down the days until they finally get their moment in the spotlight after the pandemic postponement. NBCUniversal's year-old streamer, Peacock, has also been eagerly awaiting the chance to make its own splashy debut at the Tokyo Games. A year later, though, executives are finally dusting off the Olympics launchpad, optimistic that Peacock is in a stronger position to win over audiences. “We’ve gotten more subscribers than we had anticipated at this stage, our brand awareness is over 90%, which is something that is remarkable given that Peacock didn’t exist a year ago, and we have more original programming on the platform than we did a year ago,” Matt Strauss, chairman of direct-to-consumer and international, told Adweek. “Given where we are, it’s allowed us to rethink exactly how we want to market and promote Peacock.” Peacock said in April that it had 42 million sign-ups, with about one-third of those coming into the service every month. Rivals like Disney+ and Netflix are leagues ahead, with more than 104 million and 207 million global subscribers, respectively. Olympic viewership is expected to reach an eye-popping 5 billion people, according to the International Olympic Committee, and winning over even a smidgen of them during the Games could help Peacock find staying power. Peacock’s Olympics slate The streamer’s Tokyo Olympic coverage includes: Live coverage of all men’s and women’s gymnastics competitions, all men’s basketball games (available only to Peacock Premium subscribers) and major men’s and women’s track and field events.5 always-on streaming channels, featuring highlights, historical footage and athlete profiles.4 original series, including game highlights from Kevin Hart and Snoop Dogg and three Olympics docuseries. “We are very optimistic that this is going to bring a new audience to Peacock and help us grow as we continue to add more and more subscribers,” Strauss said. NBCUniversal is hoping to find many of those viewers in-house. During the Games, which kicked off July 23, Peacock is being featured front-and-center during NBCUniversal’s planned 7,000 hours of coverage. Peacock promotions are being interspersed in prime-time coverage and throughout different dayparts, Strauss said, part of a so-called “infinity loop” of cross-promotion. Key to NBCUniversal's integration strategy is to entice network-side viewers to tune into Peacock without necessarily giving up linear impressions. The streamer will get some of the highest-profile live event coverage, including men’s and women’s gymnastics, along with women’s track and field. Men’s basketball will also live on Peacock, but those games will only be accessible via the higher Peacock Premium tier. In the evenings, NBCUniversal will encourage people to head back to linear for its nightly NBC broadcast of the day's biggest events. “With the proliferation of all these different platforms, it allows us to cater to both the super fan with everything streaming all the time, and then you can come over to the network in prime time,” said Molly Solomon, executive producer and president, NBC Olympics Production. “How can we make sure we are serving our viewers in different ways?” Serving sports super fans is a strategy built after gleaning data from Peacock's first year on the market. “The one genre that has been a huge opportunity for us, that has been a big acquisition driver, is sports,” Strauss said. Some of Peacock’s Olympics originals, which include several athlete-led documentary series, reflect an effort to satiate sports fans. But the service is also looking to attract viewers who aren’t necessarily sports enthusiasts, with late-night host Amber Ruffin from Peacock original The Amber Ruffin Show hosting her own analysis from Tokyo. As NBCUniversal hopes big audiences will flock to Peacock, so do the broadcaster’s advertisers, which will be keeping a keen eye on Peacock’s performance—and are preparing to pounce if the streamer gets the Olympics boost it's hoping for. “It’s very much about fluidity,” said Kelly Metz, managing director, linear activation at Omnicom Media Group. “We’ll be monitoring in real time how the linear portion of this, the TV portion, is performing. … And what’s going to be interesting is the explosion of the programmatic market because there are going to be so many streaming ad units created that there was no forecast for.”