Sports Marketing Summit: How Snoop Dogg helped Nine focus on its eight-year Olympic plan
Of all the surprising elements of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Snoop Dogg was by far the most welcome, popping up during the opening ceremony, making cameos throughout, and then taking central stage during the closing ceremony, when the metaphorical and literal torch was passed to the 2028 host city, Los Angeles.
It was an amazingly deployed activation - and it got Nine execs thinking about their eight-year Olympic plan.
Nine delivered 5, 000 hours of content for the Paris Games, versus 300 in London in 2012. There were over 180 million stream starts and a total of 4 billion minutes consumed across the 9Now platform.
But, after the cheers faded and the Olympics left the city of love, Nine continued working to ensure that the halo effect continues for advertisers and the network alike.
Nine’s chief marketing officer, Liana Dubois, noted that the Olympics and Paralympics historically perform strongly for sponsors, who often choose to continue their association for decades.
“If you look at the global Olympics and Paralympics sponsors, and you look at the local Olympics and Paralympics sponsors, you will note that they are notable brands,” she told the audience at the Mumbrella Sports Marketing Summit on Thursday.
“They are large, very mature marketing organisations, that do their own market mix modelling, they have to prove the efficacy of everything that they do to CEO on every day of the week – and twice on Sundays,” she joked.
“These sponsors return year in and year out, and they do it for decades, because it has both a short term impact on sales and acquisition and because it’s building long term brand equity.
“And certainly from Nine’s point of view – we did a really, really good job this year, I would say.
“But we’ve got this thing until 2032. We don’t have this thing this year, and then again in four years, and then again in four years from that. It’s not like it lights up and then goes away.
“We will have the Olympics until every day until 2032. And so we’re going to be capitalising on the brand equity and the brand value of the Olympics and those rings, and the Paralympics, day in and day out, until we get to 2032.”
So, how does Snoop fit into this?
Nine’s Russel Howcroft declared that Snoop’s continued appearances throughout the Olympics to be “the most amazing activation” of the Games, noting he got to witness it unfold up close, from his broadcasting booth in Paris.
Matthew Granger, Nine’s director of sales – sport, was certainly inspired by the seamless integration of Snoop.
“From the insight we’ve got with NBC and the Olympic committee, the way they had planned that was to begin that transition from the opening ceremony. And Snoop was their hook to prepare to bring that [coverage] to LA.
“The way they integrated that and they ran that across their platforms in the country, but even in Paris themselves – it was really, really clever.
“You know, that’s an indication they’re thinking about their four-year journey [to 2028]. And how we should be thinking about our eight-year journey.
“That has begun,” he said, of Nine’s eight-year Olympic journey.
“It’s well and truly begun.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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