5 overseas cases of content marketing at the just-concluded Rio Olympics!

The Olympics is the focus of global attention and is also the peak moment for brand marketing . In the active Chinese social media, Olympic elements are an important marketing tool for manufacturers: although the forms vary (videos, posters, activities), the themes are all about "struggle, cheer, blessings" and the like. However, overall, the creative content of domestic Olympic marketing is highly similar.

The Olympics is a grand event for all mankind. Let us look at overseas social media and see how brands carefully plan content.

【Case 1】Kellogg's Great Starts: Brand vision beyond product features

Kellogg's Company is a world-renowned manufacturer of cereal breakfast and snacks. Once upon a time, its century-old corn flakes (Cereal) were the go-to breakfast choice for families. But today, consumers have more choices. The elegant Starbucks that can be found everywhere can also satisfy your breakfast needs.

In such a market environment, how to get consumers (especially young millennials) interested in an old product category? This is a huge challenge. Kellogg's hopes to enhance its brand influence through the Olympics, but simply promoting the long history and healthy quality of its products does not seem to be enough to resonate strongly with and move consumers. A higher vision and creative level is needed!

Not everyone eats corn flakes for breakfast, but everyone wants to start their day off right. Before the start of the Olympics, Kellogg's, as a sponsor of the British Olympic team, launched the Great Starts competition, encouraging consumers to share their ideal morning in the form of photos or videos.

British Olympic athletes embody health and the Olympic spirit, and are undoubtedly the best promoters of this brand concept, so gymnast Louis Smith fired the first shot. His great starts: after pressing the beeping alarm, he does a simple stretch in bed; then a series of dazzling gymnastic moves, such as walking down the stairs with his hands upside down, a Thomas spin on the small round chair in the living room, and a forward roll on the kitchen table; and finally ends with a bowl of Kellogg's corn flakes in his hand and a cool split. This is how you start your day, dynamic and beautiful!

This publicity campaign started with the mornings of Olympic athletes and attracted widespread social participation.

George's day starts with feeding his son (future Olympic athlete Lil) a healthy Kellogg's breakfast; Jamie's beautiful morning is waking up with his baby sleeping on top of him; for Joanne, the most relaxing morning light is yoga; and Ginn's morning starts with playing soccer in the backyard. Whether you eat Kellogg's Corn Flakes in the morning or not, your day is sure to get off to a good start by staying positive.

Kellogg's Olympic promotion goes beyond simple product claims and directly hits people's core aspirations, while at the same time being consistent with the brand's association with healthy mornings, in a subtle and silent way.

【Case 2】Spot Chek: Real-time content, creating a vibrant brand

The traditional practice for businesses to promote the Olympics is to hire advertising companies to produce ads in advance and then broadcast them continuously during the event, such as the ad endorsed by Chinese swimmer Ning Zetao for Yili. However, since the advertisement is shot in advance and the content is fixed, if certain events occur, such as athletes' performance falling short of pre-match expectations, the marketing effect will be compromised, and there may even be an embarrassing situation where the advertisement is broadcast every time according to the original broadcast plan.

In the digital media era, how can businesses make Olympic content marketing more vivid and truly reflect the dynamism, excitement and variety of sports? How does Sport Chek, Canada’s largest sporting goods retailer, keep up with the action with real-time content marketing?

As the official sponsor of the Canadian Olympic Team, Sport Chek takes a mobile-first approach to its promotional strategy. A "Social Media War Room" was established at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre (CBC).

Its social media marketing throughout the Olympics used the hashtag WhatItTakes, and it created content almost non-stop, reporting on the competition and results, such as Canadian athlete Catherine Panderel winning the bronze medal in mountain biking, and cleverly incorporating its own brand voice, such as the offline event it co-organized with Under Armour to select future Canadian Olympic team members.

This marketing campaign was led by Sport Chek's own marketing team, and it also collaborated with technical editors from CBC and a public relations company. Compared with traditional TV commercials, Sport Chek closely captures the key moments and hot topics of the event. For example, there was a funny scene in the 200m semi-final where Canadian sprinter Andre De Grasse and Bolt left the pack behind, crossed the finish line hand in hand, and smiled at each other. These highlights are highly consistent with the attention of Olympic audiences and are more likely to resonate with them.

The struggle and passion of the athletes portrayed in the real-time reports organically embodies the theme of What It Takes, which is the progressive brand spirit that Sport Chek conveys to consumers.

【Case 3】Oiselle: Targeting with precise hashtags

The Rio Olympic Committee has imposed the most stringent restrictions in history on the use of the Olympic logo. Rule 40 stipulates that all athletes, coaches and other relevant personnel participating in the Olympic Games shall not publicly promote any business other than the official sponsors of the Olympic Committee.

There is a women's sportswear brand called Oiselle from Seattle. It has only 12 employees and annual sales of less than 10 million US dollars. It obviously cannot afford the high Olympic sponsorship fees. In such an unfavorable competitive situation, will Oiselle be squeezed out of Olympic brand marketing by official sponsors such as Nike? How can we take a different approach and break through the difficulties in social media?

Answer: Use hashtags that match the brand spirit to gather popularity.

Due to the restrictions of Rule 40, it abandoned any hashtag containing Olympic-related words and instead used freebird 16 as the unified label for its Olympic marketing, aggregating the activity content and reports of its athletes and fans. The word Freebird is the nickname given to the brand by Oiselle's loyal customers (just like Li Yuchun's fans call it corn). As long as you see the label freebird 16, you know it is related to the Oiselle brand and the scene is the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Maria Michta, an American female race walker and sponsored athlete by Oiselle, finished 22nd in the 20km race walk. Lauren Fleshman, also an American Olympic track and field athlete, sent a real-time Twitter report of the race results from the stadium, using the tag freebird 16, suggesting that Maria was an athlete sponsored by Oiselle.

Another surprise label from Oiselle is Flywithkate. This is customized for Kate Grace, an American middle-distance runner sponsored by the company. This label neither violates the IOC regulations nor embodies Kate's flying spirit. Kate finally lived up to expectations, making it to the 800m final and finishing 8th. Kate's extremely high popularity among her fans was concentrated on social media through a unified Olympic label Flywithkate, which created a content convergence effect and also took the opportunity to promote Kate's brand sponsor, Oiselle.

Competition in Olympic content marketing is fierce, especially when the IOC strictly controls the use of unofficial sponsor logos. By cleverly using precisely designed hashtags, you may be able to find a way to aggregate the brand's core users and influence. Be smart!

【Case 4】 CityU’s Olympic Games: Following the trends and deeply integrating brand concepts

In Olympic content marketing, leveraging hot topics (such as gold medals) is a common practice. Leveraging marketing certainly has the advantage of keeping up with the trend and being at the forefront of topics, but the degree to which the brand and the hot topic are organically combined is the key to determining how much real effect leveraging marketing can achieve.

For example, @Suning.com’s poster celebrating the women’s volleyball team’s winning of the Olympic gold medal mentions “crossing, challenging, and feverish spirit,” which are undoubtedly closely related to the spirit of the women’s volleyball team, but have no obvious connection with Suning.com’s brand (except for seeing the logo).

@360 Security Guard’s women’s volleyball team’s poster compares the success of the women’s volleyball team (No. 1 in the world) with the product selling point that 360 wants to convey (safety, 360 No. 1), conveying the degree of fit between the brand and the selling point. But the drawback is that such an analogy is a bit far-fetched. It requires a lot of leaps in thinking to associate the women's volleyball team's athletic achievements of "faster, more perseverant, etc." with being "safer". In contrast, using the victory of a weightlifter or boxer to illustrate 360's powerful force in blocking and eliminating the virus may be more closely associated with the brand and more conducive to establishing beneficial consumer brand associations.

As a new force in the education product category that is extremely active in social media marketing, @香港城大学EMBA's Sina Weibo created a series of posters during the Rio Olympics with the hashtag #城大看奥运会#, aiming to promote its brand image and philosophy. The characteristic of this set of posters is that its topic selection and design expression are closely linked to the brand concept of City University of Hong Kong EMBA, namely Global, Fresh and Inspiring .

In order to highlight the international nature of CityU EMBA, the poster topic is unique. It not only pays attention to the wonderful performances of Chinese Olympic athletes, such as the women's volleyball team who reversed the Netherlands in the semi-finals; it also promotes the positive image of other countries' Olympic teams, such as the Fijian men's rugby sevens team who won the first Olympic gold medal in history for this Pacific island country with a population of less than 900,000.

The second design point that reflects the international characteristics of CityU EMBA comes from the text. As expected, almost all brands that released marketing posters on Weibo used Chinese slogans, which were mostly centered around words like hard work, struggle, and glory. After watching it too much, I can’t help but feel a sense of fatigue and déjà vu. In contrast, the slogans for CityU EMBA's Olympic Games posters are all carefully selected English proverbs. For example, the slogan that reflects the situation in which the women's volleyball team faced the old rival Netherlands team that had defeated them in the group stage in the semi-finals and released their heroism and the spirit of turning around against all odds is "Heroism Made in Hard Times"! In order to reflect the Fijian rugby team's spirit of overcoming the contempt of small countries by sports giants (such as the final opponent, the birthplace of rugby, Britain) and fighting tenaciously to the end, the slogan used is "They Told Us We Couldn't, That's Why We Did". In fact, the English slogans used in these posters are relatively simple and should be understandable to any reader who is proficient in English. But this design detail itself inadvertently conveys the international style of CityU EMBA.

Another creative focus of CityU EMBA's Olympic posters is to explore new perspectives (Fresh). For example, most brands focus on major events such as athletics, swimming, diving, weightlifting and ball games. But the theme of the CityU EMBA poster on August 17 was the little-known Narca 17 multihull sailing race. 52-year-old Argentine athlete Santiago Lange won the championship after overcoming his experience with cancer a year ago. After the game, he burst into tears, and his two sons swam over from the shore to celebrate this unforgettable moment with their father. Obviously, this is a touching Olympic story, but because it happened to Argentine athletes and was in a slightly obscure niche event, most Chinese audiences don't know much about it. The CityU poster vividly depicts this touching moment and the spirit it conveys: My life is not about waiting for the storm to pass - It's about dancing in the rain. Because of this unique perspective on the topic, this poster received a high number of reads and reposts.

To reinforce the third brand concept of CityU EMBA, Inspiring, its Olympic poster not only applauds the gold medal winners, but also cheers loudly for the athletes who have the courage to overcome difficulties, challenge themselves and achieve breakthroughs.

The poster on August 11th promoted Cheng Xunzhao, who won the first medal for a Chinese man in Olympic judo history, with the caption "Breakthrough: When The Impossible Becomes Possible"!

On August 21, almost all Chinese brands congratulated the Chinese women’s volleyball team on their victory, and CityU EMBA was no exception. Their poster puts a photo of the women's volleyball team celebrating their victory in the center. But at the same time, Feng Shanshan was also included, who broke the Olympic medal record for Chinese golf that day.

Indeed, achieving results in our strong areas is certainly worth celebrating. However, the spirit of not fearing strong enemies, bravely reaching for the top and forging ahead is consistent with the brand concept of CityU EMBA, so it deserves to be highlighted and written about in great detail.

Following hot topics is a shortcut to creating content. But don’t just follow the trend blindly. Only by organically combining it with the brand concept can it play the greatest role!

【Case 5】Chobani: NoBadStuff reverse thinking, emerging as a dark horse

The Olympic spirit: "Faster, Higher, Stronger" conveys a positive mindset: "In order to achieve good athletic results, you must sweat more, run farther, lift heavier weights" and so on. This kind of positive thinking can often be seen in the brand’s Olympic marketing promotions, such as “more…good ingredients”, “more use of…new technologies”, etc. For example, the No. 1 mattress under Gujia Home Furnishing has a poster that clearly states “more, softer, more comfortable”, which is quite in line with the positive thinking associated with the Olympic spirit.

While most brands are following positive thinking in their marketing, American natural yogurt brand Chobani is taking the opposite approach, launching a promotional campaign labeled "No Bad Stuff" during the Olympics. It conveys the idea that in order to become a world-class athlete, one must get rid of bad stuff, such as bad living habits, negative psychology or mental states (self-doubt, jealousy, fear, etc.), in order to maximize one's athletic potential.

Similarly, Chobani claims that for foods (such as yogurt) to truly have a significant impact on human health, the bad stuff they may contain, such as genetically modified ingredients or artificial additives, must be removed. Chobani yogurt is 100% natural because it removes various artificial additives that are commonly used in other yogurt brands (and consumers are often unaware of it).

In order to make its No Bad Stuff brand concept deeply rooted in people's hearts, Chobani launched a series of 26 videos during the Olympics. This is the largest use of video in its content marketing to date. One of the videos focuses on Alex Morgan, a member of the U.S. Olympic women's soccer team. Her coach thought it would be difficult for her to succeed due to her physical condition, which became a psychological barrier for her when she participated in sports as a child. Later, as she grew up, Alex gradually became stronger, overcame her fears and doubts, and got rid of the bad stuff in her heart, which led to her current sports achievements and Olympic dreams. Alex's experience vividly conveys this concept: Sports and life sometimes also require subtraction. By removing the bad stuff, life will be more abundant!

In the positive thinking that is natural in Olympic marketing, Chobani does not follow the rules and thinks in reverse, emphasizing that only by removing the bad stuff can greatness be achieved. It has emerged as a dark horse and is impressive. Be unique!

Olympic marketing has become a battleground for many brands, with high investments and expectations. But sometimes mediocrity in either idea or execution can let a business down. This article introduces and analyzes the latest cases of overseas content marketing. They may start with the content framework: Kelloggs goes beyond products and focuses on vision; Chobani adopts reverse thinking and causes contemplation; the EMBA of City University of Hong Kong closely follows the brand concept and the content is meticulously detailed. Or start with content execution: port Chek uses real-time content creation like a campaign, and Oiselle uses precise criteria to lock in the target audience.