As Super Bowl week opens to showcase the pageantry of the intersection between sports, media and brands, NBCU is injecting new levels of promotion into what will almost certainly turn out to be two of the most-watched events in television history next week with the Super Bowl on Sunday and then the start of the Winter Olympics on Feb. 8. The one-two punch marks the first time a network has carried both events since 1992.
Charged with making the most of the opportunity is Jenny Storms, CMO of NBC Sports Group, who takes charge as the company prepares to activate with plans that include running five minute-long spots on Super Bowl Sunday (as well as on Today during the week) focusing on Mikaela Shiffrin, Chloe Kim, Shaun White, Nathan Chen and Linsey Vonn, taking up media real estate valued at $20 million. In addition, Storms is leveraging psychographics as part of the marketing plan for the Winter Games, breaking down fandom for a personalized approach into groups that include Torchbearers, Stargazers, Purists, Heartstrings, Major League Americans and Highlight heroes.
Cynopsis Sports spoke with Storms about marketing’s Holy Grail and her plans for the events.
Storms on preparations: About a year and a half ago coming off of Rio, we sat down to map out our plans for two iconic events in culture across America that were colliding four days apart in the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics. Clearly, that needed an unprecedented plan. At the very highest levels, what was really important to us was to have a solid strategy and then be able to spend this time in execution mode for what we were trying to achieve. A lot of that strategy centered on trying to do things that we had never done before and represent that specialness of these two events being so close together. Each event is so different and so unique but both are iconic to culture. So we need to figure out how to bring them to life in a way that is relevant and authentic but also special and innovative given the circumstances.
On opportunity: We’ve turned it into the Holy Grail. From a marketer’s point of view, this is a dream. You wish for this kind of opportunity to have two properties of this stature and being able to be blessed to bringing them to life so close together. Over the last year and a half, we have pushed ourselves to think differently and that has been fun. Watching the entire NBCUniversal company come together around these two events has been incredible.
On tactics for the Super Bowl: Some of the things we’ve done differently than other years is that we started promotion the Super Bowl earlier than we ever have before. Right from the opening kickoff, we started integrating that message and wanted to make sure there was no doubt about where to find it. We started really integrating messages around Thanksgiving and bringing it to life even with off-sports programming in order to give a lot more promotional opportunities to the Super Bowl message and this is where this company really unleashes the power of NBCUniversal and includes an incredible collaboration with our stations in Boston and Philadelphia in order to share content, work together and build on stunts that are being implemented. The week before the Super Bowl, everything will then come to life.
On leveraging the Super Bowl to promote the Olympics: About a year ago, we sat down to figure out what we wanted to do. As a media company carrying the game, we absolutely knew we’d be running spots of course and focus on the storylines leading into the Olympics. But we really wanted to take it to the next level. About six months ago, we sat down in a brainstorm sessions and came up with the thinking about how to bring both the Super Bowl and Olympics to life in a very authentic way and ended up with the idea to produce Olympic Super Bowl commercials, something very different from producing a promo spot. Producing a Super Bowl commercial and really taking that seriously is a brand level budget with the resources and time dedicated for the shoots. So we produced five commercials – each 60 seconds long – around five athletes. Every single one of these stories is authentic to the athlete.
On psychographics: Starting with the right strategy means that we know who our Olympic consumers are and that we know what they value about their relationship with the Olympics along with how to find them and where to reach them. They are based their needs and behaviors instead of their demographics per se. So we broke it out in a way that showed how they connect with the Olympics and positions us in a way where we can speak to them uniquely with the type of content that resonates with them.