Inside the International Olympic Committee’s marketing playbook for Paris 2024

Initha Selvakumar | Haymarket Media, Inc | July 17, 2024

Digital engagement and marketing director Leandro Larrosa spoke with Campaign US about how the organization is preparing for the Paris Games.

While athletes and advertisers gear up for the 2024 Paris Olympics to kick off in just a few short weeks, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) has been preparing since the Olympic qualifiers a year and a half ago.

“We feel that we have the duty…to tell the story…not only those that qualify, but also those that are on the road to the next games,” said Leandro Larrosa, digital engagement and marketing director of the IOC, adding that just 10,500 of the 180,000 athletes who tried out qualified for the Games. 

More recently, the Switzerland-based nonprofit, which organizes and supports the Olympics, released its own brand campaign, in partnership with Procter & Gamble, that includes a 90-second film highlighting the diverse athletes and sports played at the Games tied together by the “Olympic spirit.”

In June, the IOC kicked off the Let’s Move campaign, in partnership with the World Health Organization, which encourages people to embrace movement by creating and posting their own athlete celebration moves on social media and tagging @Olympics with #LetsMove. 

And in May, the IOC announced the 36 athletes that would make up the Refugee Olympics Team with the launch of its 1 in 100 Million campaign film.  

The IOC’s marketing push comes as the 2024 Paris Olympics aims to draw in more viewers than the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, where the Games are happening in a friendlier time zone. 

But as Olympics viewership has plummeted the past few years, and as viewers increasingly shift to streaming platforms, the IOC and NBC, which will broadcast the games in the U.S., have their work cut out for them to get viewers tuned in and excited. 

Larrosa spoke with Campaign US about the IOC’s marketing strategy ahead of Paris 2024.

Campaign US: As you roll out these various marketing efforts for Paris 2024, who are you trying to reach? 

Leandro Larrosa: We split our audiences in four different categories. One of them is the most obvious one — performance, results, medals. People follow us because they love to see the performance of the athletes. But also, we discovered that there are three other groups that are extremely interested in us. 

A lot of people follow us because it’s the biggest sport event in the world— it’s entertaining. And another portion of our audience engages with us for inspiration. The last category is related to community. You watch the Games because you want to be part of another group. Because you want to sit down with your family on Sunday around the TV to watch it together. 

The most important discovery is how equally all these audiences are split. That’s why we create very diverse content.

For the first time ever, the Olympics will have a 50-50 split of male and female athletes. How is the IOC responding to the increase of women athletes in this year’s games? Are there plans to reflect this in the IOC’s marketing efforts?

We celebrate that presence and representation as much as we can, because we think that this inspires real young girls to feel empowered. The Chef de Mission of the refugee team is a woman. Her name is Masomah Ali Zada, a former cyclist who competed for the refugee team before. If you take a look at the brand campaign that we just launched, the only two big stars are women.

For the first time, the Olympic field itself will have a nursery room for moms. We cannot forget, these athletes also have families, little kids, and some of them are still breastfeeding their babies. It represents how much the IOC as an organization and the Olympics value the presence of women in the games. 

Many people view the Olympics as a symbol of global camaraderie. How do you energize and engage audiences for such an event at a contentious time in the world?

Only the IOC, only the Olympics, can gather 206 countries not only competing, but also living together and sharing this moment. No other event in the world can create an Olympic Truce that is signed by all the countries in the United Nations. So the only thing we have to do is to highlight what is happening there. 

How is the IOC working with brands looking to tap into the Olympics to enhance their visibility and engagement?

We have different programs with top sponsors. We have a strategy, a budget and an agreement to co-create all the campaigns you will see during the Olympics and pre-Games with our sponsors. There are some other initiatives that they have as part of their own strategies. 

Samsung is going to be promoting all the medals that the athletes will be winning. So we are going to be posting more than 1,000 posts in relation to medals. We will be posting records broken with Omega, because Omega is the time scoring provider. We have an initiative in Fortnite with P&G.

As viewership of the Olympics and live sporting events shifts to streaming platforms, what strategies is the IOC implementing to adapt to this change?

Broadcasting is the number one source of viewership and income for the IOC. But at the same time, most of those companies have their own streaming platforms, like in the case of NBC with Peacock. So we are following their path, because we have long term contracts with them. We have 206 countries coming to the games, and we have retained streaming rights in 97. 

In territories where we have retained rights, we are going to be broadcasting some live streams and highlights on platforms like YouTube.     

In between the Games…we are producing a lot of content. For example, “The Redeem Team” on Netflix covered the story of the American basketball team that recovered from losing the Olympic Games in Athens and then won in 2008. It was co-produced between Netflix and the IOC. The series that you can see on Netflix right now, called “Sprint,” is also a joint effort between our production department and Netflix. A couple of other projects are going to come in between the Games and right after. 

What is your social media strategy? 

We have a social media team who will be doing 25,000 posts on 40 different platforms during the 17 days [of the Olympics]. We are close to 120 million followers. We create content in nine different languages. But…we are not translating the same content to all markets. Japanese content is created in Japan, by Japanese people, with their own way of creating stories and content. Marketing is the way you communicate different things, it’s not only the spoken language. 

How is the IOC thinking about new technologies like AI in its marketing strategy?

We launched a very interesting AI initiative [in Senegal] that is focused on talent identification. [In April, IOC] President Thomas Bach announced an Olympic AI agenda for the future. We focused on how we can use the technology to give more opportunities to more people, to more young potential athletes and talent around the world. 

This interview has been edited for clarity.

This article originally appeared on Campaign US.