10 Olympic online contest ideas for medal-worthy marketing

Just think about the Summer Olympic Games for a second. Is any event the world over a bigger deal to more people?

More than 40 different sports, broadcast around the globe, with more than 300 medals to be won. In a single day of viewing, you can root on your countrymen competing against the best in the world, watch multiple compelling stories unfold of bravery, determination, and teamwork, and see them followed through to the inevitable conclusion of someone’s dreams coming true.

Now that’s an opportunity that every business, whether you’re selling products, services, hospitality, or experiences, should be building marketing upon to maximise revenue during this golden opportunity that (typically) only comes around every 4 years. And given that the Olympics are ultimately a collection of games, can you name a more on-point digital technique to engage your target audience than gamification?

Here are our top online contest ideas and marketing game concepts to help you do exactly that. Original notions that you can use as jumping off points to build your own Olympic-focused gamified marketing campaigns.

1. Modem Pentathlon (Dynamic Path™)

The modern pentathlon is undebatably the wildest sporting event in the modern Olympics. In the Games of ancient Greece, the original pentathlon consisted of running, jumping, javelin, discus, and wrestling, and was understandably the climax of the Olympics (all those activities were incredibly valuable in that era, and were, combined, all elements requiring mastery by the ideal soldier).

First reintroduced at the 1912 Olympics, the modern pentathlon – its exact author disputed – seeked to mimic that pursuit of the allround soldier, but not a Perseus, a Jason, nor an Achilles, rather the ideal 19th century cavalry soldier. The individual events: fencing, swimming, riding, shooting, and running (with the latter 2 now being combined into a shoot and run event with a laser pistol).

So now you know the history of the modern pentathlon has real, albeit slightly outdated logic to it. You realise the Modem Pentathlon is more than just cheap wordplay!

Invite your audience to show themselves as the most allround gameplayer! How will they fare as they take on your branded Pacman, Blocks Puzzle, Football Game, Connect 4, and Bubble Shooter? All while they advance across the backdrop of an Olympic stadium, marching ever closer to the podium, and trying to climb ever higher up the leaderboard!

Who has the reactions, the strategy, and the cunning to finish at the top?

2. Specialist Subject: Olympic History (Quiz)

This one’s to find the true MVP of those clutch pub quiz team members who can rattle off every 4th place in the 100-metre final from the past 10 Olympic Games, alongside other challenging trivia questions pertaining to the world’s greatest sporting event.

The Olympic Games ended a hiatus of 1,500 years to become the modern Olympic Games we know today in 1896, and with 3 exceptions, they’ve been held every 4 years since. Can anyone in your audience name the years and the reasons why?

Whether you’re looking for real sporting knowledge from your audience worthy of a specialist subject round on Mastermind, or looking for a shorter, more general, fun way of engaging with a broader spectrum of potential customers, this can pretty much be adapted to any business.

Pro tip: Create profiles based on the scores people get, and even enable the leaderboard function to foster competition, and generate a top 10 you can reward with grand prizes.

3. 3×3: Final Moments (Basketball)

Yeah, the Olympics has the classic 5 on 5 basketball, but you can watch that all the time. What most people ONLY ever see at the Olympics is the faster-paced and much shorter 3×3!

So why not customise a basketball game that celebrates the more frenetic style of hoops? Introducing 3×3: Final Moments!

There’s only 30 seconds left on the clock and your users have got to go for broke and just sink as many baskets as they can to win the game, and climb up the leaderboard for a chance at the big prize draw!

Pro tip: Set the backboard moving at a speed you can define for an extra level of difficulty. Up the stakes to replicate the pressure of trying to make baskets with the weight of a nation’s expectations pulling at your jersey.

4. Medals Table (Leaderboard Combo™)

A huge part of following any Olympics is checking in to see where your country is in the medals table, and this is a feature you can include if you’re creating multiple marketing games as part of your Olympic marketing strategy.

The Olympic games run for just under 3 weeks, so you could connect multiple apps that either all run concurrently, or all run sequentially for a limited time, with every participation contributing to a user’s score on your branded medals table.

For repeated engagements: You could combine Olympic-themed Quizzes with relevant sports games, with each app running for 3 days, encouraging repeat interactions with your branded messaging.

For international brand building: Why not have the identifying factor on the leaderboard be the nation of the players, so all scores are aggregated by a custom format that’s your country? If you’re a big multinational promoting your brand in different countries and languages, why not unify your campaigns in Japan and France with your games in the UK and the US?

5. The Great Games Giveaway! (Slot Machine)

Everyone’s social media feeds will go crazy as all the Olympic Games stories unfold in even more ways than ever before, and that’s on top of every brand throwing the kitchen sink at their marketing to try and break through for some attention.

This is where a simple but effective concept like a Great Games Giveaway comes to the rescue!

Customise the instant win Slot Machine game engine with your branding. Make the visuals tie into the aspect of the Olympics that works best for you. and use it to grab your audience’s attention for a chance to win various prizes.

6. Hobby Hacker (Product Recommendation Quiz)

We’ve already talked about the Olympic Games driving up participation, but with so much going on, it can be overwhelming.

For multi-sport retailers like Decathlon, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and SportsShoes.com, this could be a great way to use the spotlight the Olympics can cast on less widely practised sports like climbing and archery, and through a series of questions, recommend users to head into store, or to their website to speak to an advisor about getting started.

This could also work for national sports federations or committees, with remits to drive up participation levels at grassroots levels across activities.

7. Trickshot Talent Show (Media Contest)

The rollaround of the Olympic Games typically sees participation in Olympic sports flourish. This effect can be compounded by medalists in their home countries – as their sport can benefit hugely at a grassroots level following their achievements, as an army of children try to follow in the footsteps of their new sporting heroes, and adults who have fallen out of exercise can be inspired to dust off their old tennis rackets, climbing shoes, or dig out their Parkrun barcodes to rediscover their love of sport and the sporting community.

Utilising Drimify’s Media Contest game engine, you can tap into this widespread case of Olympic fever to build connections with your customers.

Presenting Trickshot Talent Show! Invite your users to submit videos of themselves making crazy trickshots at table tennis that need to be seen to be believed – crazy gets, deft dropshots, pro-level rallies, and physics-defiant uses of spin and technique. Then connect that Media contest to a Voting Gallery, and use highlight pieces of user generated content (UGC) to promote it on social media, and double your engagement

Brands this could help: Sporting goods stores, equipment manufacturers, and even sporting facilities looking to grow their memberships.

A format that could be applied to any sport: How about Veranda to Velodrome for an example? Take advantage of the widespread proliferation of cycling tech to invite your audience to record a video of their best 5-second power on their turbo trainers, to see how they stack up to the likes of 6x Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy, and the current crop of track cycling powerhouses.

Alley-oops to Olympic Hoops? What park doesn’t have a basketball court? We could do this all day…

*Just keep in mind the potential safety risks if your sport carries a danger factor. 

8. What happened next? (Video Quiz)

Cut videos of famous sporting moments just before the thing that made them iconic happens, and ask your audience what happened next?

High jumpers Gianmarco Tamberi and Mutaz Barshim are talking to an official, but what happened next?

Linford Christie false starts for a second time in the men’s 100m final, but what happened next?

Brazilian underdog De Lima leads the Olympic Marathon with 4 miles to go, what happened next?

Why this works: This isn’t just trivia, it’s appealing to people’s visual memory, and triggering memories and feelings they may have had watching these things unfold. It’s an irresistible invitation to relive moments in history.

9. Who is the greatest Olympian? (Voting Gallery)

The Voting Gallery can be used to just put out content and invite users to select their favourite(s), it doesn’t always need to be used in conjunction with a Media Contest.

With that in mind, invite users to vote for their favourite all-time Olympians from a curated list – use social media to post entries on Olympic heroes to promote the game, and use it to create dialogue and engagement among your audience. At the end, you can create a piece of content along the lines of: “The greatest Olympians according to you!”

Tailor it to your campaign: If you sell swimming kit, make your curated list of Olympians to pick from swimmers. If you’re a non-profit with a remit to boost participation in judo, make your Olympians judokas. Since 1996, the Games have had more than 10,000 athletes participate, so narrowing the scope can be valuable.

10. Odd One Out: Olympics (Quiz)

Here’s another play on the Quiz format: can they clock the odd one out?

You present your audience with 4 pictures of 4 Olympians on a screen, and ask users to choose the odd one out. This question is followed up by asking them to say why they’re the odd one out.

Pro tip: Why not take all the variations of the Quiz, unite them in a longer form Dynamic Path™ to create a sports game show-style game? Use it to gather audience insights, and take multiple opportunities to encourage conversions and let users know about your brands and products, and enable an overall leaderboard to recognise and reward your best performers.

Expert advice

By incorporating gamification into your Olympics campaign, you can ride an unstoppable wave of enthusiasm and community that can lead to increased sales and capturing new personas. No event, barring Christmas, will capture as much enthusiasm among as many potential customers as this one.

The games are the core of the Olympics, and they should be the core of your campaign to make the most of this opportunity that only comes around every 4 years.

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