How to Watch the Paris Olympics Like a Brand Strategist 

In honor of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Jackson Spalding (JS) is debuting a special viewing guide for the brand strategist in each of us.  In this guide, you’ll hear about several brand strategy principles and find tips on how to use them to amplify your viewing experience.  So, find that favorite spot on the couch and put your strategic know-how to the test while the best athletes in the world descend on Paris to pursue their Olympic dreams.  

In this debut edition, we’ve highlighted three ways you can watch the games like a brand strategist: 

1. Get to Know the Athletes (and Yourself) A Bit Better

As brand strategists, we jump at every opportunity to learn about people and every two years we’re treated to a two-week showcase of the human spirit.  The athletic feats will captivate, but we’ll also be paying close attention to the human-interest stories as well as to our own fan perspective. 

A few human truths you’ll want to key in on include motivators and shortcuts:

Deeper Motivators:

What drives someone to pursue an Olympic dream?  Is it the medals?  Fame?  Endorsements?  As brand strategists, we know that these functional benefits, while important, are typically not what truly motivates us.  We need to listen closely to go deeper.  In doing so, we may learn about a difficult upbringing or a family member’s dying wish or a harrowing immigration story, as examples.  These personal stories often shed light into the hidden, emotional drivers that help an Olympian push the limits of human performance.

Mental Shortcuts:

In “Thinking Fast and Slow” (Kahneman, 2011) psychologist Daniel Kahneman details the innate, cognitive biases that he and partner Amos Tversky spent decades studying. It includes how humans use heuristics (mental shortcuts) to make confident, if flawed, judgements based on very incomplete information.   

During these next few weeks, take a moment to reflect on how you’ve been subconsciously handicapping competitions with little knowledge of the athletes themselves – often only their country or how “locked in” they appear.  Trust us, it will happen.  After all, behavioral evolution has turned each of us into Olympic-caliber conclusion jumpers. 

Takeaway: It All Starts with an Insight

Perhaps the single most important way our brand strategy team helps drive results for our clients is by understanding people at a deep, human level.  And by harnessing human insights, from what motivates to how narrative shapes understanding, we’re able to develop marketing plans that stir action.  Naturally, we’ll be watching as coaches try to do the same in Paris. 

2. Keep an Eye on Brand Architectures

Every two years, the massive Olympic stage offers thousands of brands a fleeting chance at becoming part of the cultural zeitgeist.  Corporate sponsors, teams, individual athletes, and even the host city share the spotlight over two weeks, creating a sort of brand “soup” of logos, personalities, slogans, soundbites and moments.  As brand strategists we’re interested in all of it – including how different brand architectures bring a bit of structure to this soupy mix.   

To help illustrate what we mean by brand architecture let’s outline a few approaches we’re likely to see (naturally, we’ll use Team USA in these examples): 

Architecture 1: “Branded House”:

Team USA may decide that each individual team (basketball, skateboarding, volleyball, etc.) should be a consistent reflection of the Team USA parent brand.  In this case, each team would adhere to a common set of branding guidelines on everything from uniforms and equipment to media talking points.  The result is a branded house that highlights the scale of USA’s athletic excellence and reinforces the connection fans have with their country.

Architecture 2: “Endorsed Brand”: 

Alternatively, Team USA could celebrate the unique qualities and personalities of its various teams and athletes.  In doing so, Team USA would oversee a looser federation of differentiated team and individual brands, all bound by the Team USA logo emblazoned on the uniforms.  By shifting its role to that of an endorser, Team USA gives latitude to teams and athletes to uniquely express themselves, which in turn may help build stronger, more authentic relationships with their fans.  

Takeaway: No “One Size Fits All” in Branding

JS’s brand architecture advisory helps complex organizations determine which brand or brands to prioritize and, in the case of multiple brands, whether and how to connect these brands.  Rigorous analysis informs these recommendations but noting how other brands deploy architectures is much more straightforward.  If you’re watching the Olympics like a brand strategist, you might even think of this as a game within the games.

3. Test Marketing Model Metaphors

Let’s suppose a swimmer is talented enough to qualify for Paris in four events, one in each stroke, and wants to develop a participation strategy and training plan to maximize their medal count.  If you consider this scenario as a brand strategist – recognizing that the swimmer seeks medals just as a client might seek sales – you’ll likely weigh two common approaches.  

Marketing Model 1: “Segment, Target, and Position (STP)”

The traditional STP marketing model tells brands (or our swimmer in this case) where to focus their efforts.  Following this line of thinking the coach segments the strokes by the different skills needed, targets those strokes that best align with the swimmer’s natural strengths, and develops (see: positions) the optimal training regimen to build on those strengths.  Here the team views the strokes as distinct and is betting that the swimmer can maximize medal count by becoming a specialist – training for and participating in fewer events. 

Marketing Model 2: “Maximize Availability”

Proponents of a newer school of marketing thought, one rooted in the principles introduced in “How Brands Grow” (Sharp, 2010), reject that focused approach.  When applied to our swimming metaphor, this model, which itself is informed by decades of empirical sales data across dozens of brands, tells us that the skills needed for each stroke are not, in fact, differentiated and therefore our swimmer should compete in as many events as possible.  In other words, if the strokes are undifferentiated from a training perspective the swimmer can earn more medals by maximizing their competition availability. 

Takeaway: Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing 

While we’ve simplified these models (for example, we haven’t touched on marketing budgets – can you guess what they represent in our metaphor?) they do help underscore how we think about strategy at JS – as a means to a desired outcome.  To be sure, we’ll never stop testing, probing and even merging models in search of ever greater results for our clients.  In the meantime, your brand strategist ears should be tuned for stories of Paris athletes who have weighed the tradeoffs of focus vs. maximum participation.

Unlock Strategic Insights like a Pro

As brand strategists, our job is to see the world through a unique lens, consider different perspectives and find inspiration and insight around every corner.  The 2024 Summer Olympics are fertile territory for both, and we hope this viewing guide helps you unlock a few insights of your own over the next two weeks. 

If you’re interested in how Jackson Spalding can apply this thinking to help drive results for your brand, please CONTACT US.