We Spoke To A PR Expert On How Olympic Athletes Can Remain Relevant Post-Paris 2024—Here’s What We Learned – Essence
For the past few weeks all eyes have been on the athletes competing for Olympic wins.
The world has been enraptured by their trials, triumphs and determination but now that the medals have been handed out, what now?
For many Olympians, the fervor and fanfare will significantly wane, and they’ll go back to their private lives but for those that wish to capitalize on the attention, there is a way to ride the wave of relevancy. That requires a plan, though.
“It’s important to understand your marketable strengths outside of your athletic ability early on,” Carlos Scott says. He is the founder of N-Vision Inc., a marketing and PR firm that has represented 11 Olympic Medalists (8 Gold) from the summer and winter Olympics.
“It’s our job to help them to navigate to monetizing their brands, whether that’s through endorsements, cross-promotional paid opportunities, paid appearances, finding other opportunities that they can have revenue streams,” he tells ESSENCE. “With technology being what it is, there are so many opportunities that somebody, even like a Michael Johnson, the olympic sprinter, had in his day.”
Scott makes a great point, as many of the recent Olympic athletes heavily leveraged social media to build an engaged digital following outside of the Olympic Village. Some have even been honest and their intentions to lure brands into securing deals with them, understandable since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) typically doesn’t provide monetary compensation to Olympians.
“I’ve had clients work a few day jobs to feed their family while pursuing their Olympic dreams,” Scott said. “It’s not easy juggling it all, and everything can be really expensive if you don’t have a major sponsor backing you.”
He shares that the first step for Olympians aiming to brand themselves is getting clear about which social media platform they feel most with, and begin posting content regularly.
“In this day and age, all of the content has to be authentic or it won’t read well with the audience you’re aiming to build,” Scott tells ESSENCE. “I would never encourage a client to step into try to use a platform they aren’t already using, and plus we want to strike while the iron is hot. You don’t want to spend too much time learning a new tool when you can lean in on what’s already intuitive to you.”
Next, he suggests that athletes be realistic.
“You can’t really expect to compete for decades and completely rely on your place in the Olympic pantheon for the rest of your working years. It’s important to have a backup plan and give it the time energy it deserves.”
For many of his clients, he says he encourages them to consider corporate speaking engagements as an immediate next step.
“This is Black Business Month, so lot of companies, corporations, nonprofits and government agencies are bringing in entrepreneurs and motivational speakers to do activations,” Scott says “This is an avenue I don’t think enough athletes are exploring and it’s a shame because they’ve built this incredible path for themselves. It’s time to capitalize on it.”
