Team Canada's Olympics Marketing Lights the Way Forward for CEO Success

As the Summer Olympic Games get underway in France, business leaders are focused not only on impressive feats of athletic endeavour but also the event's impact on the bottom line.

Close to 80 companies have contributed an impressive US $1.2 billion in sponsorship to the Games, and they'll consider closely just what this investment achieves for their businesses. But here's the issue. Before writing the big cheques, are CEOs and CFOs really maximising the potential of sports sponsorship?

Too often hefty spend ignores just what makes sport so culturally pervasive. Stereotypical sports marketing is often based on heavy references to exertion, performance, sweating the victory or coming back from a loss. Just the kind of values that resonate in successful boardrooms.

But ahead of committing to that hefty spend on sponsoring sporting entities, it's important to recognise that what makes sport so pervasive is the human condition wrapped in high interest entertainment. Sport reflects not only our physical abilities and limitations, but also provides a canvas for displaying our humanity.

Winning with human connection

The best Olympics marketing embraces this spirit. I'm a big fan, for instance, of Procter & Gamble's 'Thank You Mom' for Rio 2016. This was a brilliant strategy to connect to all sports in a meaningful way, through an idea that also has meaning beyond sport. It delivered human connection using the scale of sport as the canvas. 

I'm also looking forward to seeing new brand categories, that have not been historically associated with sports sponsorship, express themselves at this year's Olympics. I love what LVMH-owned brand Sephora is doing with sponsoring the torch relays, showing the world that its category has an equal right to play alongside a sport drink, bank or apparel product.

Encouragingly for business leaders, marketing's new found confidence and ability to show its business impact as a long-term investment as opposed to a cost is massively powerful when applied to sports sponsorship. For instance, the work of advertising effectiveness expert Peter Field has demonstrated clear benefits for Canadian brands that commit to brand building over time, and sports marketing should be seen as part of this ongoing strategy as opposed to a one-off sprint to the line. 

Another clear message from Field's research is that a focus on emotion is a significant factor in boosting brand awareness and, ultimately, efficient business growth. Sport provides a vast reserve of emotion that all spills out in tears and cheers at those big moments -  putting the human condition right at the heart of the action.

This outpouring is especially powerful at a time when marketers are finding it hard to make a connection with consumers due to the fragmented nature of people's lives and of media channels. Sports sponsorship can help to solve this issue. However, business leaders must stop and ask themselves "what's the relatable human condition that my brand cares about and connects to this sport and its audiences?" 

Team Canada's brave spirit 

That's the thinking behind our own work for Team Canada, which is by far our proudest moment as Canadians. Our campaign is decidedly different than other nations' Olympics campaigns of the past as it has nothing to do with winning at the sport that any one athlete is competing in at the Paris games. In fact, the competition in this case is ourselves, the sport is life, and the triumph is standing on the other side of it.

The goal of the 'Brave Is Unbeatable' work is to connect with every single Canadian through our athletes in a way that they not only see themselves but love our athletes for who they are as humans even more than we already do. If we have achieved that, then showing up and cheering for them when it’s show time should be natural.

'Brave is Unbeatable' features Michael J Fox and Celine Dion. But we didn't just go for star power. We started by asking ourselves who could best tell the story about the struggles to face the human condition. The duo are both proud Canadians but also brave human beings who care deeply about the theme of the marketing.

I believe that this brand platform will be successful because it is so rooted in connecting with audiences through an understanding of the human condition. CEOs and their colleagues that incorporate this thinking are on track for sports marketing success. 

Dustin Rideout is chief strategy officer and partner at The Hive.