At the time of writing the date is Friday, 9th August 2024, and that means one thing: when I get home from work this evening, I’m going to enjoy catching up on the breaking sessions from the Paris Olympic Games. ‘Breaking’, or breakdancing, is one of the new sports to grace the stage of the Olympics this season, and it’s a joy to see the art form being given its proper due as a sporting discipline after so many years’ campaigning.
Breaking joins the Olympics this year alongside a raft of new sports, including skateboarding and surfing (first seen in Tokyo 2020/21), and sport climbing. The 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles will also see lacrosse, cricket, and squash added to the roster. This year’s Olympics in Paris have been a glorious celebration of contemporary grassroots sports, and businesses can learn a lot from this when it comes to their approach to digital marketing.
The adaption of the Olympic schedule to include modern sports is a strategic move by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to maintain the relevance of the Olympic Games and attract a new and diverse audience with interests in different sports. By doing so, the games have made themselves a genuine and authentic reflection of contemporary sport around the world.
In a similar way, businesses have to evolve their approach to marketing continually to capture the attention of new demographics, while sustaining their core value proposition.
This is an important point. By bringing the likes of skateboarding and breakdancing on board, the Olympics haven’t jettisoned hammer throwing, swimming, and the 400m hurdles. All the classic sports that make the Olympic Games the Olympic Games are still present, and the presence of new sports doesn’t detract from this – if anything it strengthens them and makes them more popular and relevant. The IOC hasn’t turned to breaking in an attempt to be ‘down with the kids’, it has broadened the circle to express its value position to a new audience that consumes media differently.
The lesson for businesses is that new approaches to marketing, and new ways of expressing value through content, should be welcomed. The key is to do this in a way that preserves and strengthens your core ethos and identity as a business. It’s great to capture new and younger audiences but to do so sustainability, your marketing strategy must be grounded in a genuine understanding of your target audience, what they are looking for from you, and what you have to offer them.
It’s good to embrace video, social media and AI, but in doing so you don’t have to stop going to face-to-face events, or writing longform articles. There’s a place for multiple approaches in contemporary marketing, and the key to success is to find the marketing mix that works best for your business, your market, and your customers.
Each of the new sports represents innovation within the Olympic tradition, showing an open attitude to changing cultural trends and preferences. For businesses engaged in digital marketing, this is analogous to embracing the latest technologies and trends, whether this is augmented reality, voice optimisation, or AI marketing. Businesses should keep a close eye on the channels and technologies used by their target customers and update their strategies accordingly to keep them effective and relevant. At the same time, it pays to be mindful of the way in which emerging technologies open up new and previously untapped markets.
However, another lesson from the Olympic Games is that you don’t have to embrace every change for changes’ sake. There are plenty of sports that aren’t on the Olympic roster, and are unlikely to be so. Mixed martial arts (MMA), darts, netball, snooker, and bowling are just a few examples of popular sports that are noteworthy by their absence at the Olympics. Also, the Olympic Committee isn’t shy to discontinue sports to suit its requirements. Breakdancing, for instance, won’t be part of the next Olympic Games in LA in 2028.
Diversity in content is good for a marketing strategy, keeping your approaches fresh and preventing your content from becoming staid and predictable. Feel free to play with a range of content types to engage different audience segments in different ways, from videos and blog articles to webinars and podcasts. Monitor your results, analyse your data, and dial up the aspects that are most popular, and maybe remove or put on hold channels that aren’t resonating as strongly.
The point of adding new sports to the Olympic Games, or marketing approaches to a marketing strategy, isn’t to be ‘on trend’ but to be relevant to a specific target market. It’s a smart and pragmatic approach to adaptability and innovation that keeps a marketing strategy at the leading edge of relevance year on year.
The International Olympic Committee is playing a long game. The Olympics in their modern form have taken place on a more or less regular four-year cycle since 1896, and each set of games sees a new intake of athletes and sports fans. In this long-term context, decisions have to be made carefully and sustainably. Variation in the sports schedule is part of a long-term strategy to keep the Olympic brand relevant for future generations. In a similar way, businesses should take a long-term, sustainable view of digital marketing. As we have seen, a good way of doing this is to build on your core value propositions to strengthen your brand by using different channels, technologies, and content mediums.
You should also have one eye on the present and the other on long-term planning. A forward thinking, multiyear marketing strategy isn’t just a matter of chasing trends, but of building solid and enduring content foundations that are capable of growing and evolving with your market.
If you would like to find out more about long-term digital marketing planning and how to make the best use of emerging technologies and trends, please contact one of the marketing specialists at JDR today by clicking here.
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