Sport for Business’ Coverage of the 2016 Olympic Games is supported by Team Ireland Official Partner Electric Ireland #ThePowerWithin
The athletes that feature strongest in sponsor campaigns around the Olympics may be those we have never heard of, in sports we have little empathy towards.
The power of marketing though, allied to a greater use of deep data to understand character as well as scale, will make stars that even in London four years ago would have remained unearthed.
A US company MVP Index, founded by Jordan Spieth’s father, is analysing and scoring social media data around engagement and producing scores that differ from the pure follower numbers and have already produced a number of campaigns that are winning plaudits, drawing business and much closer aligning to brands messages.
irish company Sportego is producing similar more sentiment based analysis for a number of sporting bodies and we expect that area to become much more important in unearthing the less obvious but more effective winners in a more widely distributed media landscape.
Jordan Burroughs is a wrestler representing the US at his second Olympics having won Gold in London. His online presence is as much about being a father as it is about his achievement but it is slick, peppered subtly with sponsor references and he is currently the star of a major campaign for Hershey’s chocolate.
This is Hershey’s first Olympics with the US Olympic Committee and they were looking for athletes that fit the brand message rather than ones who would just bring a big audience.
Visa’s theme for this Olympics is acceptance and they are using a 30 year old fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, who chose her sport because it allowed her to compete while wearing a hijab.
That’s not an obvious winning campaign looking at the news headlines and the front pages of mass media but it is working because of the story rather than the chances of Gold.
Speaking to the Associated Press last week Visa’s Chief Brand and Innovation Marketing Officer Chris Curtin said “Every single face on team Visa is not just going to be a super athlete, but they’re going to have a story behind them and some form of character that draws them to us and represents the concept of acceptance.”
Muhammad made media headlines this year when asked to remove her hijab for a security photo at the South by Southwest conference in the US, an incident that went viral and played right to the core of what Visa were trying to establish.
In Ireland Electric Ireland is also focusing on the athletes personal stories with Kieran Behan from Gymnastics and Fiona Doyle getting equal prominence alongside Paddy Barnes in video content that will become part of Ireland’s Olympic story. The emphasis is and will increasingly be the story.
