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How NBC Sports Next Medaled in Olympic Content for Kids

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How NBC Sports Next Medaled in Olympic Content for Kids

Around 2016, NBCUniversal acquired a Minnesota-based sports digital platform that connected young players with local teams.

If you’re wondering what attracted the entertainment behemoth to the scrappy startup (then called Sports Ngin), think next generation.

“If you look at the research, the more kids play and participate in sports, the more they want to watch it,” says Rob Bedeaux, director of consumer engagement and content strategy at NBC Sports Next, the division that now houses SportsEngine (as it was rebranded).

NBCUniversal saw the business as a bridge to connect with youth audiences. Rob, who moved into content from product marketing around the time of the acquisition, spun that opportunity into gold. His work on a project to interest young viewers in the Olympics earned him a spot on the list of finalists for 2022 B2C Content Marketer of the Year.

A content marketing gold mine

NBC’s purchase of SportsEngine included SportsEngine HQ, its software product, and SportsEngine.com, the world’s largest directory of youth sports programs. The sports management relationship software is an operations platform that helps amateur and youth sports organizations manage registrations, custom gear orders, and ticket sales. The app lets teams track stats and scores and lets players’ parents communicate with each other.

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Partnering with sports management relationship clients through SportsEngine HQ, Rob and his content team have direct access to the players and their parents who have signed up for a sport, a league, or the app. They publish and share content around training, equipment, and how to keep kids involved in sports.

In short, SportsEngine is content marketing gold for NBC.

The more kids participate in sports, the more they want to watch it, says Rob Bedeaux, who spun this idea into #ContentMarketing gold for @NBCSports Next via @AnnGynn @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Preparing to shine for the Olympics

But the Olympics allowed the NBC Sports Next content marketing team to shine for NBCUniversal.

During the first games after the acquisition – the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang (South Korea) – Rob and the creative team worked to figure out their place in the world of the Olympics and within NBC. They started brainstorming ways to create long-term value (NBC owns the broadcast rights through 2032.)

They had their answer by the time of the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021.

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Their brainstorming included a team member’s recollection of trading cards in the 1990s featuring a Muppet on one side and an NHL player on the back with stats and other details.

That nugget prompted the team to consider creating a one-pager: The front would feature the Olympic Games, and the back would offer details about an individual Olympic sport. That idea eventually morphed into the Kids Guide to the Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games, which debuted as a 122-page guide for the Tokyo games.

Actualizing the creative concept

It took a creative village to realize Kids Guide to the Olympics. Rob worked closely with a creative director on his team to develop and refine the concept. Then, they had to get buy-in and approval.

Starting with the consumer engagement team at NBC Sports division, Rob presented the concept to the division leaders and eventually to Jenny Storms, CMO for sports and entertainment at NBCUniversal. She loved the idea and socialized it all the way up to NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell.

Why so much executive attention on an Olympics guide for children? The piece used branding marks from NBC and the International Olympics Committee, which is notoriously protective of its intellectual property.

Rob’s team got the green light in late 2018 and began creating the guide in earnest in 2019. The first completed section (about gymnastics) made the executive rounds again to make sure everyone liked how it was coming together.

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“Once we got approval for it, we just buckled down,” Rob says. He did most of the writing and brought in copywriters to help finish the guide. Research analysts and editors from NBC Sports reviewed and fact-checked everything.

The front half of the guide focused on the Olympics generally – the history of the Games, its flag, the participating countries, etc. The second half broke out each sport (their original concept).

It took a creative village to realize the Kids Guide to the Olympics, says @Ann Gynn via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Adding fun for all ages

The guide needed to be educational and fun. So Rob searched for interesting tidbits and creative outlets to entertain both parents and children.

For example, the swimming section included some of the sport’s basic rules so parents and children watching the sport together would know what was happening and why. But it also included games in case the kids got bored while watching.

For the skateboarding page, Rob found a maze online and got the creator’s approval to include it (he only wanted credit in the guide.)

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“It really makes it that interactive family experience,” Rob says.

Holding (up) the course

By March 2020, the early version of the guide was ready. Then, the pandemic hit, the Olympics got put on hold, and so did the youth guide. The Summer Olympic Games’ new dates – July 2021 – were announced in November 2020, and the kids’ guide returned to production.

At this point, the content had to go through an even more rigorous review and approval process. Each sport’s governing body had to review its page this time, and the U.S. Olympic Committee had to check all the sports.

“There was a lot of back and forth externally as well as internally in the review process,” Rob says, noting how long that review took surprised him. But, now that he knows, it can be built better in the production schedule.

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The Kids’ Guide to the Summer Olympics came out in June 2021.

Given the pandemic delays, the timing of Tokyo meant Rob’s team had only 4.5 months to produce the guide for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Fortunately, he says, they could repurpose the Games history and overview from the summer guide with just a few tweaks. They also created new pages for the sports, which are fewer in number than the Summer Olympics.

Repurposing #content helped the @NBCSports Next team create a Kids Guide to the Olympics for the Beijing games in less than five months, says @AnnGynn via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Promoting the guide

Of course, great content requires excellent marketing. So, Rob and his team members Kelsey Erwin and Keaton McAuliffe had to figure out how to get the word out.

They added a landing page to the SportsEngine site to collect email addresses pre-launch. They offered the guide by email to 15 million families in their youth sports network. They reached people who downloaded SportsEngine HQ via the app.

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But Rob and Kelsey also looked outside their business line to use the NBC Sports and NBCUniversal assets. They placed inserts in the NBC Sports Olympics newsletter that went out three times a week leading up to the Games. The guide got mentioned in the regular emails sent by the Today Show, Universal Kids, and Peacock (NBC’s streaming service).

They also got a bump mention (a short video clip/mention before or after traditional on-air programming) on the Today Show. During Olympic Trials, a sportscaster mentioned the guide, which also showed on the lower third of the screen with a QR code that brought viewers to the landing page.

“It’s kind of fun because depending on what’s happening, [sportscasters] can make that organic in the conversation. They could do that read through and then tie it to an athlete playing by explaining how that person started in the sport,” Rob says.

Interestingly, the best converting channel wasn’t one of NBC’s mega properties. It was the message bar appearing at the top of the websites of the youth sports organizations that were clients of SportsEngine HQ.

Awaiting the scores

The best feedback Rob received came from kids who enjoyed the guides. Rob explains: “That was one of my biggest worries. It was a total passion project for me. I thought it was super interesting, but is it going to be interesting to an 8-year-old, a 12-year-old?”

His answer came in the form of social media posts with kids holding up their guides.

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One child who’d received a print copy at an event requested a second copy so they could write in one and save the other. The team also got direct feedback: One family shared that they sat down with the guide and picked out the athletes they wanted to watch. Once the Olympics kicked off, one of the children kept asking, “Is it time for swimming yet? Is it time for swimming yet?”

“That was very fulfilling,” Rob says.

And it’s the kind of result NBCUniversal had in mind when it first backed the team all those years ago.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski of the Content Marketing Institute



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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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