And the gold medal goes to…Challengers
By Sarah Tilley
Blood, sweat and tears (both triumphant and despairing) were in abundant supply during 2024’s summer of sports. While the athletes may have received the most attention on the pitch, in the pool or at the Palais de Versailles, they weren’t the only thing that grabbed our focus. Much can be learned from the brands who used Challenger thinking to cut through the noise, making an oversized impact with the millions of people tuning in.
As we highlighted in our recent webinar The Anti-Dull Intervention – the most effective way for Challenger brands to get noticed in a crowded field is to subvert expectations by challenging the audience’s assumptions – it’s why Turkey's Yusuf Dikec went viral for his unexpectedly casual style. French telecoms brand Orange also employed this tactic when it came to their sponsorship for the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. Showcasing footage from the record-breaking Rio track finals, the ‘When You Love Sport, You Love Sport’ campaign showed the same event at the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics side by side demonstrating how similar they are. The big reveal came however when Paralympian Baka ran the T13 1500m faster than the Olympic gold medallist, thereby debunking misconceptions around the athleticism of Paralympians and grabbing the attention of viewers.
With so much going on and so many brands competing for eyeballs – how can one brand stand out? By talking about the losers instead of the winners, of course. Paddy Power’s reactive campaign to England being knocked out of the Euros by Spain was a great example of a brand that turned the category norms on their head to grab viewers’ attention. Featuring an England fan disparaging everything Spanish, Paddy Power was able to poke fun at their audience with self-deprecating in-jokes they understand and relate to, even referencing Madri Beer which appears Spanish but is actually brewed in the UK. At the same time, by talking about the losing team, Paddy Power was able to speak up while other brands were silently waiting in the winner’s circle ready to try to shout over each other with their congratulations.
One of the key definitions of Challenger brands is that they have ambitions that outweigh their resources (and so they can’t afford to just fade into the background). Now you wouldn’t think that was true of global brand Samsung, one of the main sponsors of the Paris Olympics, but according to their chief marketing officer, Benjamin Braun, that was the exact scenario this year.
In an interview with The Drum, Braun discussed how rather than doing what they always did in previous years as a sponsor (buy on-the ground and broadcast media), they used product giveaways to Olympic athletes to show off their brand’s assets and gain fame. Athletes were encouraged to take selfies using the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip while on the podium and post them to their own social channels. Not only did this effort gain headlines on major news outlets, Samsung was now visible to all of the athletes’ followers around the world. As Braun said, “These are Samsung phones; we produce them at cost, so if you look at the price of giving 17,000 phones away versus the amount of media coverage that we got, there’s no comparison whatsoever.” By throwing out their incumbent thinking on what an Olympic advertiser should do, Samsung was able to increase their impact without increasing their budget.