NBC Sports Group has figured out that if it wants kids to watch the Olympics, it has to turn traditional marketing on its head. Rather than loud spots with high energy and lots of quick cuts, NBC’s top marketers have learned that schmaltz — to use Chief Marketing Officer
John Miller’s term — is in.
Members of a younger generation that have seen the U.S. engage in armed conflicts for most of their lives have reacted best to heartwarming spots that talk about nations coming together for the Olympics.
During a sports business conference in Chicago late last month, Miller said that he first saw this new dynamic while testing ads before the 2008 Beijing Games.
“I tested a new spot, which was very schmaltzy,” Miller said. “It turns out that the audience where it tested the best was 18- to 34-year-olds. … The reason they liked that is because they are so desirous of having a world come together and not be at war. Whether the Olympics is or isn’t [something that unites people] is for somebody else to decide. It represents the idea of the world coming together, which turns out for the young people to be very attractive.”
Over the past few Olympics, NBC’s audience has skewed much younger, Miller said, citing stats that said the network saw a 35 percent growth in kids and a 25 percent growth in teens for the 2012 London Games. The interest increase among younger demos in London had less to do with NBC’s marketing push and more to do with how NBC presented the Olympics, making them available to digital and mobile customers in a big way.
“The entire thing was on any device; you could stream everything,” Miller said. “Sometimes there were as many as 32 streams going on at the same time. You have a device where you not only experience the Olympics, but you could communicate it with your friends. It turned out to be a perfect consuming device and marketing device to reach young people.”
 |
NBC Sports Group CMO John Miller: “They are so desirous of having a world come together and not be at war.”
Photo by: DAVID DUROCHIK
|
Miller is in the process of creating on-air spots for the Rio Games next summer. In the next few months, he’s bringing around 100 athletes to West Hollywood for five days to shoot promotional and programming materials for the Games. The top athlete, again, is expected to be
Michael Phelps, who has the biggest name recognition among all potential Olympians. Beach volleyball player
Kerri Walsh Jennings also scores well on name recognition, Miller said.
NBC also plans to highlight swimmers, like Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky, and gymnasts like Simone Biles. But Miller conceded that it’s not an exact science to pick who the breakout stars will be during an Olympics that’s more than a year away.
“You effectively have to find the people who will be great stories and make stars out of them for the Games,” he said. “There are other stories that are beginning to emerge. We’ll track those."
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.
