62 brands spent 1.2 billion euros. Is the more expensive the Olympic marketing, the better?

Under the five Olympic rings, the battle for brand marketing is equally fierce. With 62 brands spending 1.2 billion euros, Olympic marketing seems to have become a battle of capital. However, is it really "the more expensive, the better"?

The more expensive the Olympic marketing, the better?

The quadrennial Olympic Games is not only the pinnacle of global sports competition, but also a phenomenal public communication IP that attracts major brands to participate. It is also a place of fame and fortune where major brands compete for wallets, pomp, and voice.

This year's Olympics has received a record 62 brands with sponsorship fees of about 1.2 billion euros. As more brands step up their efforts, the cost of Olympic media purchases has also risen sharply, and even spending a lot of money to sign high-priced sponsorships and top athletes seems to have become the most effective and safe choice.

But is the only option for Olympic marketing to be to spend money for exposure? Not really.

Previously, Dao Fa Research Institute published a collection of cases titled "Whether you have money or not, you can do Olympic marketing well." Dao Fa believes that Olympic marketing is not just a marketing arena for big brands. Big-budget brands bet on Olympic champions, and small-budget brands can also leverage communication potential and strengthen brand concepts outside the Olympic arena.

In order to further elaborate on this point of view, DaoFa noticed the Olympic marketing case of the fresh milk brand "Daily Fresh" among a number of Olympic blockbusters. Daily Fresh did not choose the marketing strategy of "grabbing volume", but started the Olympic marketing from the perspective of "establishing mind".

During the Paris Olympics, Daily Fresh and brand spokesperson Tang Wei launched an exhibition of paintings by children with autism. Daily Fresh brought Olympic-themed paintings created by children with autism to famous French landmarks such as the Seine River, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower, and displayed their paintings to attract more attention to children with autism and their artistic talents.

It is understood that this event not only received attention and coverage from local European media, and successfully went beyond the Paris Olympics, the topic also quickly topped the domestic hot search list.

1. “Grabbing the spotlight” is not the best solution for Olympic marketing

Higher, faster, louder.

Olympic marketing activities usually rely on large-scale and intensive media exposure to achieve maximum coverage and overwhelming advertising to convey brand voice.

However, the overwhelming use of “face scanning” has never been the optimal solution for communication.

According to Kevin Lane Keller's Brand Resonance Model, massive brand exposure can only bring about the lowest dimension of brand resonance - brand recognition and brand memory.

What drives consumer loyalty and influences consumer purchasing decisions is trust, which can only be gained from the emotional connection between consumers and brands.

Therefore, according to Keller’s model, the ultimate goal of brand communication is not to see who has the loudest voice, but whose story can be recognized and empathized with by consumers (top-level brand feeling and brand resonance).

It can be seen that the crazy investment of major brands in the Olympic Games is often out of helplessness.

Source: Marigold Collaborative: Brand Resonance Model: Explained

In such fierce competition, there is no maximum investment in marketing activities.

For example, Nike, the sponsor of all previous Olympic Games, invested the highest marketing expenditure in history in 2024. In the first quarter of this year alone, Nike spent $1 billion on media, an increase of 10% over the previous year.

In order to be seen amidst the vast amount of information, even Nike, with its bulging wallet, had to come up with the slogan of “fewer, bigger” internally and use huge marketing expenses to support the telling of its Olympic brand story.

In addition to "investing more and spending more money" in Olympic marketing, how can brands win with ingenuity and complete their brand mission? In fact, Olympic marketing does not need to be a traditional grand narrative, but rather use the Olympic IP to convey brand value propositions.

Use the humanistic spirit of the new Olympics as the core driving force of brand communication.

The core spirit of Olympic humanity has always been to encourage mankind to constantly challenge themselves - "faster, higher, stronger".

In the past, the Olympic spirit was more reflected in athletes. However, in recent years, this humanistic spirit has been changing.

More voices are calling on everyone, regardless of skin color, gender, or health status, to become their own champion. "Faster, higher, stronger - more united" has become the new core of the Olympic spirit.

Against this backdrop, unlike previous Olympics, the stories of many athletes and ordinary people who did not win gold medals at this Olympics also touched the hearts of the audience.

The charity art exhibition for autistic children held by Daily Fresh in France is a communication with consumers based on the new core of the Olympic spirit.

Compared to the high-profile and passionate competition, Daily Fresh will turn the spotlight to the outside of the stadium, focusing on the humanistic Olympics, illuminating those autistic children who are not good at speaking, allowing the world to see their vivid inner world and colorful Olympic imagination, and jointly promote the Paris Olympic spirit of "a more open Olympics".

With multiple supports, the topic #每日鲜语汤薇奥运会公益火到巴黎# became a hot search on Weibo and Douyin, and many major central media and industry media spoke out. In the enthusiastic discussions and resonance of consumers, we can see that Daily Fresh has not only achieved a huge volume explosion during the Olympics, but also successfully achieved a strong association with the "Olympics" in brand memory.

Word cloud source: Sina Weibo hot search smart search word cloud

Daily Fresh’s Olympic marketing provides us with a new solution by paying attention to autistic children during the Olympic Games: Olympic marketing does not have to be a traditional grand narrative. It can start from social emotions, find the brand’s exclusive position, carry out public welfare marketing activities that resonate with the audience’s emotions, and base itself on the brand mind.

From the perspective of brand marketing, Daily Fresh provides us with a set of formulaic usages for establishing brand awareness in the Marketing 3.0 era, namely: wide range + close distance + new perspective = brand awareness.

First, the scope is wide. Brands must choose topics that are widely recognized in order to resonate at home and abroad.

Secondly, close-up: the brand story must be close to consumers and come from their daily lives;

Finally, we need a new perspective. The education and social integration of autistic children has always been a hot topic of concern to the whole society. However, the public does not know much about autistic children, nor is it clear about their talents. In this contrast, consumers will be surprised by the talents of autistic children.

As mentioned above, everyone is his or her own champion. When people are more concerned about the stories behind the champions, Daily Fresh has found the champions in life. Children with autism have also achieved "faster, higher, stronger". Daily Fresh wants to join hands with the general public to achieve the "greater unity" in the humanistic spirit of the new Olympics.

For Daily Fresh, this communication with autistic children not only attracted social attention, but also allowed the brand to reach its target consumers.

This formula can also be reused in any major social hotspot. When a brand wants to break out of the internal routine of "grabbing the voice", it can start from the perspective of "establishing the mind" to complete the emotional connection with consumers and strengthen brand trust.

2. Use one point to lead the whole, so that consumers and brands can speak together

In the Olympic marketing arena, the launch of a brand event requires not only good stories and good insights, but also continuous voice.

A big advertising bombardment is more like a short-distance sprint, with a wide range of ads and large-scale advertising within a certain period of time to achieve a brilliant effect like fireworks. Daily Fresh did not adopt the "stealing volume" approach, but chose to communicate with consumers with the spirit of triathlon.

After gaining popularity for the first time on the streets of Paris, Daily Fresh did not rush to fully launch the event, but instead further "communicated" with viewers who were interested in the event, taking the purpose of the event a step further.

Daily Fresh has simultaneously launched a charity cloud painting exhibition for children with autism, using online mini-programs to break the limitations of space. Users can also help promote children's paintings by generating and sharing support posters so that more people can see them.

By cooperating with Chinese national track and field team athletes Yu Wei and Chen Jiapeng, the event was able to gain further exposure and reach more potential consumers.

Daily Fresh has also teamed up with terminal supermarkets and channel partners (such as Bear Claw Coffee and Naiwa Coffee) to use charity tag bottles and coffee cups as carriers to establish marketing touchpoints in a wider range of offline channels and allow consumers to participate in the dissemination.

The marketing strategy of using one point to attract another group of supporters attracted Daily Fresh Talk. These consumers continued to participate in the activities, spoke up for autistic children, and eventually triggered a second round of social discussion.

Bear Claw & Naiwa consumer check-in pictures

Through emotional resonance and in-depth communication, consumers are persuaded to participate in the action of calling on the whole society to support art education for children with autism. By using a single point to attract the whole, and using emotions to move people, more people are paying attention to children with autism at the social level, and more consumers are aware of the brand values ​​of Daily Fresh, and their trust in the brand is deepened.

3. Analyst Comments

Marketers all know that compared with high-end TVCs or interesting content marketing, the threshold for public welfare communication is relatively higher.

From a brand perspective, public welfare communication seems to be more for the sake of public welfare. For this reason, consumers tend to doubt the motivation and sincerity of corporate public welfare communication. At the same time, there are not many successful cases in the market that want to achieve both social missions and brand marketing effects through a public welfare activity.

The threshold for public welfare communication is high, but there are also many marketing pitfalls. If you are not careful, you may be avoided by consumers because you don’t understand special groups well enough.

Take Daily Fresh for example. Since 2022, it has been paying long-term attention to children with autism. By continuously paying attention to special groups, Daily Fresh has a better understanding of these children and how their shining points can be combined with public welfare communication.

For example, it continues to help Feiye Special Education Center to carry out special art therapy courses, and also launched the "Rabbit Year Love Bottle" with colorful paintings.

In terms of marketing, Daily Fresh’s public welfare communication has broken away from the marketing dilemma of “talking to oneself” and has empowered the brand.

In summary, Daily Fresh’s new ideas for Olympic marketing include the following four points:

1. Rather than touching yourself, you should touch your consumers

2. The first element of winning with content is to find the connection point of the brand from the Olympic spirit

3. Use "good stories" to win the hearts and minds of consumers. Consumer participation is the best "communication resource" to achieve great results with little effort.

4. The fact that public welfare communication can go viral is not a flash in the pan marketing idea, but a long-term commitment to brand building.

Daily Fresh first accurately identified the new marketing track of the Olympic humanistic spirit and selected a good story that was widely recognized, close to life and surprising to consumers. With the strategy of using a point to lead the whole, cultivating loyal consumers, and transforming them from "participants" to "promoters", the brand event finally went viral.