How ads went for gold at the 2024 Summer Games

Key Takeaways

1. Strong creative and strategic targeting are key: In saturated environments like the 2024 Summer Games, ads need to tell unique and compelling stories that resonate with viewers, extending beyond generic themes of triumph and aspiration.
2. Female athletes are the stars: Brands are realizing that female athletes have a growing influence. They are powerful and relatable, leading to effective advertising campaigns.
3. AI advertising is tricky: Tech companies are trying to promote AI, but it's a balancing act between showcasing benefits and addressing people's concerns about this new technology. Positioning AI as a helpful tool rather than a human replacement is a more digestible approach with audiences.

During the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, athletes are viewed through a microscope as every turn, flip, stroke, and breath are analyzed by armchair experts from the comfort of their homes. Amid the fervor are brands also vying for our attention, each hoping their message takes home a different kind of gold.

But how effective were this year’s ads? Creative|Spark AI, Ipsos’ AI-powered ad assessment tool, reveals fascinating themes that emerged in the advertising arena of this international athletic competition. We tested 31 ads across multiple different categories.

Turns out, it's not all about sports drinks and running shoes. We're seeing themes of travel, food, even business, proving that the Games are a melting pot not just of cultures, but of consumer interests.

Just like a decathlon athlete needs to master multiple events, successful advertising on a world stage needs to resonate across these diverse themes. Understanding these modern-day advertising tropes is crucial for any brand hoping to stand on that podium. Because in this arena, the right creative can be the difference between winning a medal and going home empty-handed.

The Thrill of Victory

The heart of the Summer Games lies in the athletes' journeys – their stories of triumph over adversity. These narratives resonate deeply with consumers, creating an emotional connection that surpasses traditional advertising. However, that also means that during this time, human-centric stories become as common as hurdles on a track. Our analysis of these ads shows that 3 out of 4 of the ads were sports-themed and half told a story of personal triumph.

To truly stand out with this type of narrative, brands need to tell a story that's not just inspiring, but one that leaps over the high bar set by the Games themselves.

Source: Ipsos meta-analysis of 21 ads that used the 2024 Summer Games in Paris as a theme

While some brands aimed for those heartwarming, aspirational narratives, they found themselves stuck at the starting line, failing to make it past the first heat since their stories weren't unique. Advertisers and brands need to remember that highlighting aspirational and gritty stories can get lost in the sea of similar “feel-good” stories that flood the broadcasts at this time.

Among the ads aired on this stage with the theme of “striving for excellence,” the Brand Attention Potential was just average. (Brand Attention Potential is a predictive measure of an ad’s ability to capture attention to reinforce brand memories.) The creatives run the risk of being less impactful on this stage than it could be while running live. A way to stand out here is to focus on brand credibility: What is the brand’s role and why is it uniquely able to tell this story? Our analysis of 2024 Effie Award entrants showed that 71% of positive change winners had a clear reason for the brand’s involvement (vs. 53% of non-winners), demonstrating effectiveness is linked to brand credibility. A great example here is Omega’s ad as the Official Timekeeper of the Paris Olympics.

Omega Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games:

This year, some brands decided to skip the sappy, sentimental ads and instead opted for a more lighthearted, product-focused approach, often featuring female athletes. Ads with female athletes using the products/services were the ones that Creative|Spark AI awarded with high Creative Effect Potential, and these ads scored 20% higher than those that didn’t use those techniques. (The Creative Effect Potential is an AI-predicted Ipsos validated measure for short-term sales effect.) We saw Sydney McLaughlin sprint into her partnership with Neutrogena and Lydia Jacoby, a swimming sensation, share how Venus razors help her prepare to make waves in the pool. These two ads scored in the top 95% and top 85% for Creative Effect Potential within our dataset, respectively.

Sydney McLaughlin x Neutrogena: 

Venus - My Most Powerful: 

The focus on female athletes and sports are becoming more top of mind than ever thanks to the phenomenal success of athletes like Simone Biles but it is not limited to the Summer Games themselves – other female athletes like Caitlin Clark are clearing the way for fandom and focus unlike any before, proving that female athletes are a force to be reckoned with, both in and out of the arena.

The brands that clinched the gold medal in advertising this summer kept it simple and relatable. They highlighted female athletes using their products in a genuine and engaging way. This strategy proved to be a winning formula, cutting through the clutter and resonating with audiences.

It is also worth noting that many brands might be hesitant about using themes of unity and patriotism as storytelling devices to help stir up positive feelings in the current climate. However, an Ipsos survey shows the United States is on par with the global average in believing that the Games are an opportunity to bring their country together (70% vs. 72% global) and make them proud of their country (77% vs. 78% global). While unity and patriotism were themes used in only 24% and 19% of ads, respectively, this space was an opportunity for advertisers: We also found that ads with themes of unity and patriotism score 10% and 15% higher on Creative Effect Potential.

The Agony of Defeat

With every triumph comes defeat. On the other end of Paris Games’ advertising success, we saw some brands show up to a fencing match with a pool noodle – relying on the wrong creative tool for success.

From our Creative|Spark AI Research, 48% of brands fell below our benchmarks on Brand Attention. The themes they missed were...

1. Some focused too much on the athlete and not enough on the brand: Ipsos knows from its robust set of creative learnings that when choosing a celebrity or athlete for advertising, relevancy is the top consideration. Ads that show celebrities with a logical connection to the brand lead to improved Brand Linkage and Behavior Change scores of 10% and 19%, respectively. Relevancy feeds into longevity, reach of audience, uniqueness, monitoring, and image. The connections we saw from ads that were low-performing were all hyper-focused on the athlete/celebrity, which overshadowed or lost the benefit of the brand. Instead of viewers walking away with sentiments about the brand or message, the creative fell short of the podium as it highlighted the games instead of the brand or product. While being relevant to the current event is ideal, the brand always needs to remain the star. Missing an opportunity to highlight yourself through visual branding cues or audible mentions makes it challenging for your presence on this stage to be impactful.
2. Went too far into empathy and feeling too niche: There is a balance of leveraging empathy and emotion with brand messaging that can be challenging for creative to master. The Games do bring a wide range of emotions of victory, purpose, defeat and sacrifice, to name a few. Many ads dove headfirst to recreate the same feeling you get when watching the athletes perform. The difference and ultimately downhill effect of this was the target audience not resonating with the niche storyline each of these low performers displayed. A series of scenes or ad that is too specific and disconnected from one another and even more so the brand, didn’t stick with viewers and causes low brand attention.

AI Takes The Lead

This year’s Summer Games saw several big tech companies advertising their AI capabilities directly to consumers. With AI in broader conversations, emotions heighten, installing feelings of newness, curiosity, fear, and worry. We as humans can’t help but wonder if now this, then what. Research from Ipsos and BBC shows that 57% in the U.S. agree products using AI will profoundly change daily life in future (global average 66%) and 63% agree that products and services using AI make them nervous.

With that context, companies that displayed their new feat during the Paris Games were entering on eggshells in this newfound territory. The fear about AI replacing humans vs. AI helping humans is a specific nuanced reaction to new technology that is difficult to tease out without human insight.

By looking at human responses through Creative|Spark, we uncovered strengths in the emotional storylines that were overshadowed by a broader cultural conversation about AI’s impact on the world. There remains a palpable anxiety among audiences about the potential impacts of generative AI and people have begun forming instincts about where they are comfortable with AI. Ads that focused more on generative AI as a helper instead of a replacement for humanity performed better.

Because Gen AI is still so novel, best practices for delivering new news to consumers remain important. Not only must brands spend time introducing and demonstrating the capabilities, they need to make sure to focus on the brand and command brand attention. We saw brands who hit the mark in introducing new offerings display their logos, brand voiceovers, brand cues, and mentions throughout the ad.

The Spirit of Competition

This year was the first year where viewers of the games in the U.S. could stream every sport live and watch replays. This means there were ample opportunities for advertisers to reach engaged audiences like never before. It also means brands that may have never considered advertising on this stage before can more attainably make it a reality.

Some brands thought outside of the stadium by finding connection to the Paris Games and opportunity for them to highlight themselves. This includes veteran brands like Coca-Cola, Michelob Ultra, Samsung, Lilly and Visa as well as more rookie brands like Fenty, Nulo, Figs, Airbnb and Athleta.

What does this mean in terms of advertising? From our Creative|Spark AI testing, the results showed a clear way for any brand to break through: Great creative levels the playing field. Having good creative acts as an equalizer between big and small brands and can compensate for lighter media spends. Brand size and association to the games doesn’t automatically mean your ads perform better. With thoughtful and purposeful creative, any brand can hook a viewer by being informative, entertaining, tugging on the heart strings. Now, larger brands tend to have the benefit of larger media budgets, but smaller brands can still compete fiercely by being smart and strategic.

Ipsos knows that good creative is best paired with a strategic media buy which is why we have an in-market campaign measurement methodology called Creative Impact. Brands and athletes tend to have a lot in common. Just as the athletes competing, it doesn’t matter if you come from a big or small country, if you put in the work, play into your strengths, and stick your routine, you can still medal!

Crossing the Finish Line

Remember, in the grand arena of international sports advertising, a well-crafted theme can be the difference between taking home the gold and going home empty-handed. Don’t sleep on the little guys either, sometimes an upset is all you need to realize the potential your brand has for next time around. Stay hungry for gold, advertisers; Ipsos is here to help train you on your way to victory.