The 2024 Olympics and Paralympics united viewers from around the world in a celebration of athletic excellence. As 10,500 athletes from 200 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) competed in Paris, several highlights and memorable moments emerged: Simone Biles leading Team USA to gold in the women’s gymnastics final, Katie Ledecky’s triple-gold medal triumph, an opening ceremony featuring both decadence and decapitated heads. As always, brands and companies got in on the action, adapting their marketing strategies to the Olympics 2024 and taking inspiration from the games.
Also held in the French capital, 17 days after the Olympics, the 2024 Paralympic Games brought together more than 4000 athletes from over 170 countries. The highlights continued. Triathlete Mark Barr, who first entered the Paralympics 20 years ago, won his first medal at the age of 38. The USA became the first team to win three consecutive Paralympic gold medals in men’s basketball. And Ali Truwitt scored a pair of silver medals for swimming just 15 months after a shark attack that claimed one of her legs. Brands like Bridgestone and Toyota backed Paralympic athletes and featured them in campaigns.
The marketing strategies used during the Olympics 2024 were hit and miss. But while some brands made missteps in their creative strategy, many brands were able to capitalise on the Olympics intelligently, whether through savvy brand collaborations with athletes or creative advertising campaigns.
The Brands & Advertisements That Excelled at Olympic Marketing
Here are some brands that had solid marketing strategies during the Paralympics and Olympics 2024 and the way they made their ads and campaigns stand out:
Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH)
Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy was a major sponsor of the 2024 Olympics, bridging the gap between sports and fashion. They custom-created trunks for the Olympic and Paralympic flames and medals to be transported in, sponsored athletes, held pop-ups and events for their wines and cognacs, and sponsored the Olympic torch relay through its cosmetics brand Sephora. The brand’s multipronged approach was beneficial for its visibility, especially when so many other fashion brands are content to stick with athlete uniforms.
Nike
While Nike’s ‘Am I a Bad Person?’ ad was criticised for going against the spirit of the Games, the company still made several savvy marketing moves throughout the Olympics. Nike introduced its most diverse range of team apparel to the Olympics, focusing on a “spectrum of styles” that prioritised comfort and durability. Its partnership with the U.S. basketball team led to game-day jerseys and custom sneakers for star players LeBron James and Kevin Durant, boosting the brand’s social media visibility.
Proctor & Gamble
Multinational consumer goods company P&G (Proctor & Gamble) focused on providing support for athletes behind the scenes. During the lead-up to the Games and the Games themselves, it used its big brand portfolio—including names like Pampers, Gillette, and Always—to meet the needs of athletes. P&G opened a salon in the Olympic and Paralympic Village and gave the public a peek into a domain that’s off-limits to the average person.
Samsung
As a long-term worldwide Olympic partner, Samsung is no stranger to having a presence in the Olympics. In Paris 2024, the brand introduced the ‘Open Always Wins’ campaign. With this campaign, Samsung aligned itself with openness and the spirit of the Olympics: a celebration of innovation and open-mindedness. As part of this campaign, Samsung encouraged its users to share their own stories of open minds and hearts and created an Openness Medal TikTok Challenge.
Deloitte
In the lead-up to the Paris 2024 Games, Deloitte partnered with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to showcase the inspiring stories of history-making athletes. These stories were displayed across the IOC’s digital channels, such as TikTok, Meta, and X. Athletes included Nicola Adams, who broke boundaries as the first female boxing champion at the 2012 Olympics, and Natalie Du Toit, the first leg amputee to swim at the Olympic Games in the same year.
Lululemon
As the official outfitter for Team Canada, Lululemon designed eye-catching outfits for its athletes and used its partnerships for greater social media visibility. By strengthening its association with Canadian athletes in people's minds, Lululemon increased its exposure across social media channels and improved brand loyalty. When Canadian sailor Sarah Douglas went viral on TikTok discussing Lululemon’s athlete kit, it generated an extra $1.02 million in earned media value for the brand despite Douglas not being in an official partnership with them.
Channel 4
British broadcaster Channel 4 released its ‘Considering What?’ campaign to promote the 2024 Paralympics. This ad subverts the cliché of athletes “overcoming their disabilities” to compete and instead shows them overcoming gravity, time and friction—the most powerful forces in the world—to show just how world-class these athletes are by any definition.
Why These Marketing Strategies Succeeded
Most of these successful strategies (and other successful Olympic and Paralympic marketing strategies) had some things in common. They captured many of the qualities that people typically associate with the Olympics, such as inspiration, connection, togetherness and excitement. They helped athletes tell very human stories about their journeys to get where they are rather than simply highlighting the remarkable feats for which they’d spent their whole lives training. They harnessed the power of user-generated content (UGC) and positive user interaction. They also connected their brand values with the values of the Olympics. Their presence during some of the Games’ most magical moments helped create positive mental associations in viewers’ minds.
How to Incorporate These Marketing Strategies Into Your Own
Whether your brand has anything to do with sports or not, here’s how you can use successful marketing strategies from the 2024 Olympics to enhance your own name:
Share the moment
The marketing around the Olympics focused on sharing many of the Games’ most memorable and inspirational moments. Sporting or otherwise, you can use victories and achievements to your own advantage by highlighting them in blogs and social media posts. These human stories (such as peeks behind the scenes) show the more human side of your business and make you feel more relatable.
Connect to your brand values
Brands that connected athletes’ moments of victory to their own values made a more striking impression than those that just posted standard messages of congratulations. When you want to showcase a triumph, it’s effective to connect it with a value your brand holds somehow, e.g. resilience in the face of adversity.
Partner with rising stars
Everyone wants to be associated with the athlete who’s on top. However, it also helps to build connections with influencers and public figures who are on the rise and showing tremendous potential. Support them while they’re on the rise so you can share the spotlight with them in a way that looks and feels authentic. You’ll also gain a reputation as a brand that supports talented up-and-comers.
Make user of user-generated content
The Olympics was a global event that encouraged interaction from all around the world with hashtags on social media sites like Instagram and TikTok. To help build brand authenticity, loyalty, and social proof, encourage your followers and customers to participate in the creation of content.
Have Your Marketing Strategy Excel With Anchor
Anchor takes a personalised strategic approach to marketing strategy to build your brand and move you up the search engine rankings. We focus in-depth on important factors like your messaging, objectives, ideal clients, and budget. Through consistent testing and refining, we guarantee your strategy remains strong.
Anchor can help you clarify your brand identity—who you are and what you represent—and keep your story consistent across all forms of marketing. We can research your target audience, refine your tone of voice, and develop a consistent design across your brand assets and a logo that powerfully represents you. Like the brands that succeeded during the Paris Olympics, we’ll help you stay genuine and connect with your audience in a sincere way.
If you want to draw on the most effective marketing strategies from the Olympics 2024, contact the Anchor Digital team.
