The Marketing Olympics: who’s on the podium?

With the 2024 Paris Olympics in full swing, Gareth O’Connor, Founder and Director of Something Different, has been thinking: what if there was a Marketing Olympics?

Would your brand make it to the Games? The final?

With so many brands aspiring to get there, only the best are selected.

Like the real thing, there would be a whole host of events, and no doubt some new ones each year as a new platform or technology emerged to disrupt the field.

For marketing purposes, you may be thinking long-term, and a marathon comes to mind, or perhaps you’re more interested in the short term, and the 100m is your thing. We will focus on the 1,500m as it requires speed and just the right amount of endurance. You can’t be going too early and need to ensure you have the investment, sorry, energy to cover the distance with the right motivational comms to finish strong.

This year’s 1,500m was packed with awe-inspiring marketing talent ready to prove their effectiveness and demonstrate to the C-suite they had built pricing power.

You’ll no doubt want to get to what happened in the final, so here is a quick recap of what we saw from the heats and semis. Every brand that made it to the Marketing Olympics had excellent fundamentals. It was clear that they had prepared and had fantastic conditioning, with all the right training and nutrition in place. They understood their customer’s needs and problems and answered them through their products and services. They all had clear brand positioning, were precise in what they believed would get them the gold, and knew what they would do about it to not only deliver for their customers but to give them an edge over the competition. They all understood how to maximise their price and deliver peak performance, and they knew how to harness creativity’s power to garner greater attention and effectiveness. Like any great athlete, they had a great team around them, and they worked to perform at an elite level.

When it came to what they offer, a couple of brands put their communications on steroids, but thankfully, the good people at the athlete testing caught them, and bans followed. This is an excellent reminder to live up to your brand promises.

The semis were hard-fought, providing great entertainment and superb storytelling, but only the best made it through.

Here’s a rundown of how the final played out.

In 8th place, LunaLux made a strong showing and was clearly ecstatic to make the final, but it focused too much on product features in its comms, which didn’t connect with future buyers.

7th place by a head was Ember Essence. It was clear that, whilst Ember too focused on a key product feature in their comms, it was better than LunaLux, but more was needed to challenge for 6th.

Understanding the functional/rational benefits they delivered to their customers and pairing that with a bit of fun in their communications saw Elysium come home in 6th place, finishing a couple of metres ahead of those in 7th and 8th.

Maximum effort and serious investment in marketing, creativity, and media created a massive extra share of voice (ESOV) that supported a single functional benefit over the longer term and saw Chroma take home 5th place. Our studio panel believed they could have achieved more if they had brought in some emotion. It’s the Olympics, after all.

Fortress was our fourth-place finisher who really made us feel it. They focused on the emotional benefits they brought to their customers in their offering and communications, increasing their performance and the price they could charge. They tired a little in the last 100 metres, which showed they focused too much on ROI and left profit out there on the track.

Which brings us to our medal winners.

Velocity won bronze. They really made themselves available, securing their place in the minds of category buyers. Talk about brand salience! My word. They also made it easy for category buyers to find and buy them, fuelling more significant growth, which those behind could learn from. Their coach, Byron Sharp, was undoubtedly proud and a sign of how marketing athletes can grow. Introducing a brand character to their suite of distinctive brand assets gave them a couple of meters and some space on those behind them. It was a lovely addition, and the crowd clearly loved it.

Bringing in coaches Les Binet and Peter Field after the last Games was a master stroke for Zest, our silver medal winner. They focused on the long term and built a strong brand through emotional communications that primed the market, connected with future buyers, and paired that with motivational communications that created action without discounting the price. They managed the race well and maximised their effectiveness. They will be serious gold contenders for future Games. Their fame is undoubtedly rising.

And to our gold medallist Quantum – our back-to-back Olympic champion. Again, they demonstrated a long-term commitment to their craft. They have great fundamentals, a great product, and beautiful comms with the proper research and tracking in place. They minimise weaknesses and play to and amplify their strengths. They also have a great team around them, who all play well together to get the best out of each other for the betterment of their brand. Bringing in coach Ritson years ago was smart. They are doing both long and short, nurturing their brand and justifying a price premium on the competition. Consistency in product and service delivery, nutrition, training, comms, and media are vital. They are also likable and always have just the right amount of humour. Some do have it all. Hats off!

If they keep this up, they can expect to win at the World Champs in two years and possibly three-peat at the next Olympics.

Or will a new challenger learn from what works and bring their brand to the fore next time?

Could your brand challenge for a medal?

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