Campaign Highlights from the 2016 Rio Olympic Games

So the 2016 Olympics are officially over! Now we just have to wait for the next games in Tokyo 2020. But for two exhilarating weeks this Summer, over 2 Billion people from around the world watched world athletes and sporting heroes win medals and break world records.

There were records smashed, shocking doping allegations, diving pools turning a very curious green, a fantastic 2nd place spot on the medal table for team GB and of course, some brilliant marketing campaigns joining in with the spirit of the Olympic Games.

The BBC was the official broadcaster for the games, and BBC Sport offered an exciting animated advert for the Rio 2016 games to get viewers in the Olympic mood. This obviously worked as the BBC achieved a record television audience for an overseas Olympics, as 45.24m people tuned in.

Digitally, over 100 million people used the BBC’s service. Over the course of the games, BBC Sport managed a record-breaking 102.3million unique global browsers, with 68.3million coming from the UK. The biggest single day for digital traffic was Sunday the 14th August, or ‘Super Sunday’, with an incredible 19m unique browsers across the world.

But it wasn’t just through TV advertising where companies engaged customers and viewers of the Olympics.

Panasonic UK, an official partner to the British Olympic Association, wanted to build Team GB support by using a campaign called #Superfans, which meant fans of Team GB could post pictures to social media using this hashtag. Panasonic UK offered incentives for fans to win prizes, such as a 40inch TV if you posted a photo seen celebrating Team GB with this hashtag. All photos were posted onto a page on Team GB’s official site which made for great viewing and most of all, great team spirit for Great Britain.

Channel 4 is the UK’s official Paralympic games broadcaster and have been advertising the Paralympic games the same amount of time since the BBC started advertising for the Olympic games. Channel 4’s Rio Paralympic Games Trailer celebrates not just athletes, but also disabled non-athletes from around the world, contrasting incredible athletic achievements with everyday tasks. The underlying message is that ‘We’re All Superhumans’, and this empowering ad shows that it’s not athletes who are superhuman. Following the success of the London 2012 Paralympic games for Channel 4, where an incredible 11.2 million watched the Opening Ceremony, making it Channel 4’s most viewed programme in the past decade, we’re sure that Rio 2016 will be just a spectacular and astounding to watch.