With the Olympics and the Paralympics having just wrapped up, we’re getting back to our regular programming and missing our daily medal tally updates! That said, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on the lessons learned from this once every four (five!) year event. Tokyo 2020 was an Olympic Games the world will never forget. Not only was it struck by a global pandemic and postponed by a year, the on-going COVID-19 outbreak meant there were no spectators and masks were required at all times outside of competition. Despite the hurdles, Tokyo put on a show and the media were on a roll reporting on sporting events, personal achievements from Olympians, the food halls, Olympic village and who can forget the beds designed for “sleep” only. Despite the fun and games, there are many PR lessons to be learnt from the Olympics.
Don’t fight the news agenda, embrace it
The Olympics attract the attention of the entire world. While not everyone can relate to the Olympians, it becomes the talking point of the world for several weeks. So it’s best to attach your cart to the Olympics, hitch your wagon to the global talking point and make it an easy run to the top.
Navigating client expectations
While the team were flexible in pitching our stories to align with the Olympics, keeping our clients in the loop on the heavy and ever-changing news agenda was so important in managing their expectations. Despite the team’s determination, PR has no guarantees so navigating our clients through the Olympics was important to ensure their full understanding of the media environment at that time.
Once in every four five-year event
The 2020 games were like no other. For the first time ever, the games occurred not four, but five years after the previous one. As well as this, the pandemic was still in full control of the news cycle with countless lockdowns across the country, vaccine rollouts and new contagious strains of the virus. Navigating these agendas became increasingly difficult as the pandemic continued, but by honing down on specific publications and journalists to understand their landscape, MediaCast was able to secure some incredible coverage including an opinion editorial for Koenig Solutions and Matific in Australian Community Media, ABC Weekend Breakfast for Going Live’s Cinderella Live! Pantomime and ABC NewsRadio for Developing Australian Communities.
Which network is Home of the Olympics?
Each country has a dedicated television network that holds the rights to run the games, so factoring this into strategy planning is key. The network hosting the games airs rolling coverage on news and morning shows, so it is vital to plan your pitching strategy more thoroughly than usual to work around this. Even stories with a completely different story line can get bumped. So just like the Olympians were training, the MediaCast team were meticulously planning each campaign, spokesperson, case study and story. Lifestyle factors from the games also contributed to the heavy news agenda. From the bed design in the Olympic village, to the food hall and even illegal parties held by Olympians, it wasn’t just sports reporters who were reporting on Tokyo 2020. Never one to miss an opportunity, we were able to leverage the Paralympic Games to support our story on offensive language in the disability sector. By linking our pitch with the time hook of the Paralympic Games, we were able to gain real traction with this story and journalists loved our fresh perspective and new data.
It just goes to show, that no matter what challenges we need to navigate, there is always a way to make your brand stand out. No one really knows what the next few months might bring, but we’ll undoubtedly be seeing coverage on vaccine updates, states coming out of lockdown, Melbourne Cup and before we know it, Christmas will be here! So if you’re looking for some help to cut through the noise – we’d love to chat!