The Paris Olympics are over and I'm emotionally destroyed by the closing ceremony (Billie Eilish on the beach, Tom Cruise rappelling off things) but professionally energized because these Games were a masterclass in brand strategy, good and bad.
Let's do a quick rundown.
Nike's decision to feature Kaepernick generated $6 billion in brand value and a 31% increase in online sales. The people burning their Nikes on Twitter were a rounding error. The controversy was the strategy.
Winner: Nike's "Winning Isn't for Everyone" campaign. After a few years of what I'd charitably call "strategic drift" (we all remember the innovation pipeline concerns), Nike came out swinging with a campaign that was essentially a middle finger to the participation-trophy era. The Willem Dafoe narration. The unflinching focus on elite competitiveness. This was Nike remembering who Nike is. Not the mindfulness brand. Not the everybody's-welcome brand. The winning brand. The villain origin story brand. Finally.
Winner: Nike's "Winning Isn't for Everyone" campaign.
Winner: LVMH's quiet dominance. As the premium sponsor, LVMH didn't just put logos on things. They had Louis Vuitton making the medal cases. Berluti designed the French team uniforms. Chanel dressed the torch relay. This was luxury integration done right, where the brand elevates the moment rather than interrupting it. It's the difference between sponsorship and patronage, and LVMH understood the distinction perfectly.
Loser: Any brand that tried to ride "girl math" or "very demure" into their Olympic creative. By the time your Olympics spot references a meme, that meme has been dead for three internet cycles. The production timeline of broadcast advertising is fundamentally incompatible with meme culture, and brands need to stop pretending otherwise.
Surprise: The IOC itself. I know, hear me out. The IOC is historically one of the most tone-deaf brand stewards on earth. But Paris forced their hand into something interesting: an Olympics that felt less like a corporate sports event and more like a cultural festival. The breakdancing. The surfing in Tahiti. The ceremony on the Seine. Whether intentional or accidental, the IOC's brand shifted from "institution" toward "curator", and that's a much more modern posture.
Winner: Samsung's shade at Apple. Their ad campaign showing athletes recording with Galaxy phones while pointedly not showing iPhones was petty and effective. When your competitor isn't even an official sponsor, and you can make them feel absent, that's good warfare.
Loser: Brands that confused representation with strategy. Showing diverse athletes in your ad is table stakes. It's not a campaign idea. It's not a differentiator. Several sponsors confused "featuring women in sports" with having something to say about women in sports. There's a difference between representation and insight, and audiences can feel it.
The meta-lesson from Paris is one I keep returning to: the brands that won are the ones that had a clear point of view before the Olympics started. Nike didn't develop their competitive edge positioning for the Games. They just expressed it there. LVMH didn't decide to be luxurious for two weeks. They just applied their existing ethos to a new canvas.
The Olympics don't transform brands. They reveal them. And if you don't know who you are before the opening ceremony, two weeks of global attention will make that absence painfully visible.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to watch Simone Biles's floor routine one more time. For strategic research purposes.