How marketing for the Olympics is more different than ever before

GMR Marketing Senior Vice President, Jessie Giordano, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the challenges marketers are facing due to constraints surrounding the Olympic Games and the adjustments they are making to deliver the best marketing strategies possible.

Video transcript

- Pretty unique Summer Olympics certainly underway over in Tokyo. Sponsors and athletes, you need to change their approach in order to maximize the opportunity to get exposure at this year's games. Let's talk a little bit now about the opportunities and the challenges. Bring in Jessie Giordano, Senior Vise President over at GMAR Marketing.

JESSIE GIORDANO: Jessie, thanks so much for jumping on this morning. Let's just start with-- with maybe the challenges that-- that the games face right now from a marketing standpoint. It's a marketing event. I would almost argue, first and foremost. We can leave that for another time.

But you know, what are the challenges that the games face with no in-person events and really an event that feels very 2020 even though we've seen a lot change at least here in the US in 2021?

Thanks, Miles. And great to be here. I think that the challenge really is we've gotten here. So when we look forward, it's just making sure that everything goes off. But when we rewind to the last year, the challenges are across the board from how the athletes and partners prepare, how do you operationalize the Olympic games when you can't be on the ground, and then really how do you maximize engagement with fans when you again don't have that human interaction like you usually do.

- Jessie, it's Julie here. What about for the athletes? I'm curious in the conversations leading up to the games, particularly for the athletes for whom this might have been their last opportunity, right? To go to a games. So how do they think about the time of their career, the cycle of their career, and how this games fits into it?

JESSIE GIORDANO: Yeah. It's a finite window. And we were talking to some of our athlete partners who really were making those life decisions. Do I put my life on hold for another year? Marriage, having children, starting that next chapter of your career.

And I think most-- most because of the preparation that went into it made the decision of, yes, it's worth waiting that extra year. But then to be able to compete. And we certainly hope that they can see it through.

- Jessie, how does this Olympics change how marketers approach marketing for future Olympics?

JESSIE GIORDANO: So at GMAR, we always advise our clients to be thinking about it holistically. I think what we've seen is it has to be more purposeful. How are we leveraging that Olympic platform to drive conversation, whether that be diversity equity inclusion, sustainability?

So-- so much more than just athletic performance. Also, how do we think about experience innovation shifting from a purely physical to having those hybrid the virtual experiences content as the driving force?

So I think we are seeing it across the sponsorship landscape. It's not unique to the Olympics. But it's definitely making marketers reimagine how they bring those partnership assets to life.

- And then just-- just think about the Olympics as an institution. I mean, there are some challenges around how much you can reference the Olympics, and whether it's the big contest in some country X, right?

Just some of those practical challenges. How much work goes into making sure that everyone is in compliance with what end up being? We can say the Olympics and in media coverage. But it's a lot different if you're trying to sell something or bring your story out as an athlete or a brand or a partner.

JESSIE GIORDANO: Yeah, absolutely. So we have seven clients activating during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Most of them are official partners in some form or fashion. So whether that be the top, which is the highest level of global partnership, or a domestic partnership partner as well.

So we're really advising how do you take advantage of the full rights and benefits that you have using the IP, being able to reference the marks. But for those non-Olympic partners who are still wanting to show up, it's definitely a very complex undertaking making sure that you get the credit without using the full rights and benefits packages.

- All right. Jessie Giordano, Senior Vise President at GMAR Marketing. Jessie, thanks so much for jumping on this morning to talk a little bit about the Olympics.