The best brand engagements from Paris 2024
Out of the hundreds of brands competing for attention during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, we've highlighted why Samsung, Nike, and LVMH made our top 3.
This year’s Olympics messaging was about bringing everyone together, as conveyed in the official tagline ‘Games Wide Open’ created by W Conran Design, the agency behind the branding of this year’s games.
Paris 2024 was positioned as a party that everyone’s invited to and brands were competing for attention throughout the sporting events. We saw countless examples of this through the eye-catching campaigns before and during the Olympics, but some brands stood out more than others when it came to engaging well with this historic occasion.
Samsung – one of this year’s official sponsors – topped our list with their campaign ‘Open Always Wins’, which launched ahead of the games. In our view, it authentically reflected the key themes of Paris 2024: unity, openness and inclusivity.
As part of the campaign, an Olympics Experience pop-up was set-up for spectators to watch game highlights and participate in an immersive experience, exploring Samsung’s evolution with every historical Olympic event. Not only this, but the Galaxy Z Flip 6 phone Olympic edition became the star of the show. Athletes were gifted the exclusive phones, which were spotted on the podium where athletes weer taking selfies and in videos on TikTok.
Next up is global athletics brand Nike with their summer campaign Winning Isn’t For Everyone. The sharp-shooting title, created by Wieden+Kennedy, speaks to the mindset of what it takes to be a successful athlete, featuring famous sports stars such as Serena Williams, Kylian Mbappé and Jakob Ingebritsen.
The brand has also done well with earned media during the games. WeArisma reported that Basketball superstar and Nike’s Olympics ambassador Lebron James contributed $21 million dollars in EMV through his 9.6m social media engagements during the games.
Lastly, we have LVMH, which became the first luxury brand to be an Olympic sponsor with its $163m investment. Luxury French jewelry and watch house Chaumet created the medals and torch for the games and Louis Vuiton’s creative director Pharell Williams’s latest collection was worn on the backs of athletes.
A brilliant example of how LVMH amplified the value of brand experience was the star-studded Louis Vuitton event that took place ahead of the Games’ opening ceremony. These were just some of the ways that LVMH made its mark at Paris 2024.
Overall, brand engagement for this years’ games was tactful but emphasised each brand’s unique storytelling strategies. Unification was the underlying message for Paris 2024 and this came into play in some of the activations we saw at the Games.
LVMH was a particularly interesting sponsor for this year, as it proved that there is a place for luxury brands and further highlighted the openness of this year’s games. We hope to see more authentic and engaging brand campaigns at the Games in the future. We’ll definitely have our eye on LA28.
