All of Lisa Baird’s work over the last two years will be on a world stage come August. As chief marketing officer for the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), Baird is the ringleader in charge of lighting a fire of enthusiasm in fans around the globe for Rio 2016.
Leading a team of 60 marketing and sales professionals at USOC, Baird is responsible for managing 35% of the USOC’s revenue in a calendar year through sponsorships. But after seven years in her role, Baird—who previously served as senior vice president of marketing and consumer products for the NFL—is up to the challenge, hardly able to contain her enthusiasm for the events surrounding the upcoming Summer Games. In the middle of one of her busiest weeks of the year, she talked with Marketing News about the ever-increasing requests for experiential marketing, how the USOC is staying ahead of the curve by marketing to a younger generation and what sponsors are doing to impress her the most.
Q: What is the biggest challenge you face in marketing the Olympic Games?
A: The Olympic property is different every single time. It’s a new city, a different set of athletes, a different course of marketing progression. The biggest challenge for us is reinventing ourselves every two years. But it’s fun, because you get to bring a lot of creativity and innovation to that.
Q: When you talk about being creative, what are some ways that you and your team find inspiration?
A: One source of creativity for us is always where the games will take place—how to capture the spirit of that and talk about our athletes’ journey on that particular road to that destination. “The road to” has become a big marketing platform for us and our sponsors. Each [Olympics] is different, and we reinvent that. That’s the biggest form of inspiration. But how you talk to consumers and how they engage with athletes and our content is also rapidly changing, so we’ve thought through a ton of change based on social engagement, fan experience and how people are joining us now. That’s all part of the challenge.
Q: How do you maintain a balance of new sponsorships without losing sight of the personal nature of the games for athletes?
A: The more money we can raise, the more money we can give directly to athletes and national governing bodies. From sponsorships, 82 cents of every dollar goes directly to athletes. What we always want to do is make sure that through controlled media, we’re telling America the stories of how these athletes are doing what they do to be the best in the world and how they’re overcoming challenges. We talk with media a lot to tell those stories, and we engage with our sponsors, like P&G and BMW, to make sure they’re using athletes to tell their stories as well as market their products.
Q: Are advertisers asking for new or different things this year?
A: Yes. This year is going to be one of the most marketed games of all time. Every sponsor is working on ever-more interesting, ownable ideas to their property. The fun part for us is to be able to dive deep with a brand to say, “Here’s your brand, here’s our platform. Where is that unique area where we can tell the story?”
Q: Are you embracing experiential marketing this year?
A: Very much so. The demand for experiential keeps growing. One of the areas we have a lot of difference in this year is how USA House (a gathering place for USOC staff, Team USA members and families, corporate partners, suppliers and licensees) at Rio Games will be used as an experiential platform for brands to reach back to U.S. audiences. Our USA House is where we entertain a lot of people during the games. [Sponsors such as] Budweiser are doing things that will be fun for fans back home to also experience.
xQ: How do you manage expectations of sponsors and advertisers while keeping athletes happy?
A: We work on a lot of different levels with the athletes. We help sponsors create personal endorsements with athletes, so we make sure all our sponsors are sponsoring what we call, “the unnumbered ambassadors.” The more athletes you sponsor, the better it is for us. One of the things we love doing is working with our licensees to bring branded apparel to life—Nike with their podium apparel, fan gear and village; Ralph Lauren with what they do for opening and closing ceremonies—that’s really our segment. The athletes love to get that Team USA gear. Nothing makes you feel more like an Olympian. When they get their gear, they’re so excited to be a representative of Team USA.
Q: How are you dealing with fears around the world about the threat of Zika virus? Are you expecting it to affect attendance?
A: We’re doing everything we can to make sure the latest information from the CDC and the World Health Organization is available on our website. They are the experts. We’re also taking all the precautions we can when we entertain and with hospitality, providing things like insect repellent. So far, we’re really excited about ticket sales. Every Games, we encourage our sponsors to host private events at USA House, and the Rio Games are no exception. We are sold out completely. We’re expecting a pretty big convention of Americans to travel to the Olympic Games.
Q: What new technologies are you employing in your marketing efforts?
A: One thing we’re excited about is virtual reality (VR) demonstrations of different Olympic sports, a showcase in our Road to Rio fan tour. It’s really cool. Getting to experience a dive from a 10-meter platform with virtual reality is very interesting to see.
Q: It seems like in the coming years, VR could be a game changer in how people watch the Olympics.
A: Yes, I think it will be. Americans are very familiar with sports like basketball and football because they see them on their TVs every week during the season. But I think being able to experience gymnastics or diving or speed skating, that’s not something every American can see and know about. [VR is] going to help us expose our national governing bodies (NGB) in sports to a whole new generation of Americans. We have to continue to get in the pipeline for sports to grow and recruit those next generations.
Q: Speaking of generations, how will Generation Z influence your marketing efforts in the future?
A: We’re already there. If you look at the growth of our fan base, where we continue to be very strong, the Olympics is a No. 1 property for millennials and teenagers, and it’s because our sports are exciting and engaging to that audience, so we’ve already been there working. It goes to the great job the [International Olympic Committee] has done to innovate on sports. Things like “snowboard cross,” where it was just snowboard initially, then some of the new things they’re doing with action sports, get people exposed to that via the platform of the Olympics. We’ll always go to our sports as our core area for every new generation that comes up. Now that we’ve reached Generation Z, we’re already thinking, “What’s next?”
Q: What is your strategy for social media?
A: We have an enormous social strategy for the Rio Games. It starts with understanding what our core messaging and communications are. We want to tell the stories of our athletes, plus make sure that all Americans are going to be able to watch the games on TV, so we’re making sure that we’re telling people what the schedule is and when to tune in to NBC to watch. We’re also supporting our sponsor initiatives through social media. A lot of our sponsors will integrate with us and do branding content video, and that is distributed via our website and social media channels. I think the thing that’s new to these games is that because the fan base of the Olympics is so diverse, we’re able to utilize a different voice on each social media outlet—Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook—to really target those specific users. That’s been a lot of fun to see how the core messaging is interpreted.
Q: You’ve been CMO since 2009. How has your job changed over the past seven years?
A: We started with a very small footprint of our marketing platform, and it’s gotten bigger and bigger as we’ve had success filing more sponsors. We’re still a fairly small nonprofit, so being able to keep up with the exploding world of media, the number of sponsors we have and the increasingly long time frame of work with future Games is definitely challenging.
Q: Through your career, what have you learned about building relationships with sponsors?
A: I think the most valuable relationships come when you, as a property, understand [a sponsor’s] business problem and their business objective. The mistake I see is people say, “I have a program, sponsor it.” Instead, we try to come at it from a customer point of view. For example, United Airlines has been our partner for 35 years, so they have a very different goal and problem to solve than someone like Chobani, which is a brand new sponsor. We’re on our third games with them, and they’re still trying to introduce the U.S. to their yogurt. It’s about really understanding how different sponsors have very different problems to solve and initiatives to get behind, and then creating the time to listen and understand how you can help them achieve their business objectives.
Q: Any other new sponsors that you’re excited about?
Cape Town, South Africa- July 21,2016: Special-edition CocaCola bottles commemorating the 2016 Rio Olympics. On the left is sugar-free Coke Zero with a graphic depicting a swimmer; on the right is classic Coke with a gymnast. The Olympic rings appear on both bottles.
A: Hershey’s just came on, and it’s fun to work with them and all of their brands to create programs for Team USA. We’re also excited to have the milk board that markets on behalf of milk processors. People talk a lot about virtual reality and e-sports, and that’s all exciting, but I love to see the creativity and innovation that our partners are bringing to things like packaging. Coca-Cola has done so well to make their packaging more expressive and in the moment. You see what Hershey’s is doing to change their chocolate bar wrapper, which they haven’t changed in 122 years. And every time you open a cup of Chobani yogurt, you’ll see a quote from one of their athletes. I’m really enjoying the packaging and points of purchase at retail programs more than ever before.
Q: You spent time in high-level corporate marketing positions at General Motors and IBM before working for the NFL, and finally landing at USOC. What makes sports marketing unique from other marketing roles?
A: My last job before the NFL was with IBM, where I was the senior vice president of marketing and communications across all the countries IBM marketed in. It’s a very different and fast industry. You really have to keep up with all the fundamental differences in technology because they are the industry leader. In sports, we’re trying to preserve brand leadership, and we’re making sure we’re changing our marketing objectives, strategies and platforms to keep up with the market, but a lot of our work is to make sure that all of our stakeholders are coming along with us—whether its NGBs, volunteers, athletes, federations or sponsors. There’s a lot more of what I call “evangelizing the movement,” making sure we’re constantly telling the story of how important those stakeholders, and particularly Americans, are to the future of Team USA. How we can bring Americans along in our journey to ultimate success is probably the biggest change.
Kelsey Ogletree is a freelance writer for the AMA's magazines.