Looking toward the New Year: Winter Olympics

Published January 1, 2014 at 8:19 am

Happy 2014! A new year is upon us, and with it, the chance to reflect on the possibilities that the future will bring for marketing initiatives as a whole, as well as the opportunities that may arise. This pertains not just to new technologies or policies, but to major events that could represent a launching opportunity for a new brand.

Let’s take one of the biggest and most obvious examples: the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. This is obviously a major chance for you to take advantage of massive international media attention and get people talking, in real life and online, about the new messages on display.

The Globe and Mail reports that Canada’s Olympic Committee is looking to broadcast itself before the games with a new “We Are Winter” campaign. Also known as “Nous Sommes l’Hiver” in French, this marketing tactic looks to turn something often used as a slam against Canada (that it’s too cold) into an advantage for this particular arena.

In a video making the rounds, various examples of winter sports are shown while a narrator describes how “winter” shapes who Canadians are. Other ads use lines from Canadian poems (not dissimilar to the way Levi’s has used quotations of Walt Whitman in its TV spots) to emphasize the character of both the ice and, theoretically, the athletes.

It’s likely that we’ll see more heavily sponsored ads along similar lines as the games get closer. For now, it’s worth it to think about not just what kind of ad campaigns might be good for the Olympics, but what other events might arise that can necessitate special marketing ploys.