When the Event Should Be the Star of Your Ad
When the Event Should Be the Star of Your Ad
Marketers rarely have the luxury of sustained attention. A consumer may pass a billboard at highway speed, glance at a print ad while turning a page or pause briefly on a sponsored post before continuing to scroll.
In many of these settings, an ad has only a second or two to communicate something meaningful. That has traditionally made clarity and consistency the safest creative strategy: show the car, the meal or the skincare product so people can quickly recognize what is being advertised.
But in the study “Why Advertisers Should Embrace Event Typicality and Maximize Leveraging of Major Events,” researchers François A. Carrillat, Marc Mazodier and Christine Eckert suggest that major events may create an opportunity to depart from that familiar playbook.
Published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the research examines what happens when brands build ads around recognizable elements of major sporting events rather than leading with familiar product imagery. When an event such as the Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup or Wimbledon Championships already occupies a prominent place in consumers’ minds, an ad may perform better by looking unmistakably like an ad for the event—even when it looks less like a conventional ad for the product.
Four ways an ad can communicate
The researchers compared four creative approaches.
Product-typical ads use imagery people commonly associate with the product category. A car appears on a road. A restaurant ad shows a meal. A skincare ad features a face and the product.
Event-typical ads are built primarily around recognizable elements of an event. They might feature a running track, tennis court, stadium, athlete or host-city landmark, while the product itself remains less prominent.
Dual-typical ads try to do both. They combine familiar product imagery with obvious event imagery.
Atypical ads do not clearly resemble either the product category or the event and require more interpretation from the viewer.
Across four experiments involving three major sporting events and 32 ads, the researchers tested how these approaches affected brand attitudes and, in one study, participants’ actual brand selections. Exposure times ranged from just 100 milliseconds to five seconds.
At extremely brief exposures of 500 milliseconds or less, event-typical ads performed about as well as product-typical ads and better than atypical ads. Once exposure reached two seconds, however, event-typical ads became the strongest-performing category.
That distinction matters. Event-led creative did not require a long, carefully considered interaction to work. Its advantage emerged within the limited attention windows common to print, outdoor and digital advertising.
The results extended beyond favorable opinions
The researchers also tested the approach outside a controlled lab environment.
During the Wimbledon Championships, they ran four versions of a restaurant advertisement on Facebook. The event-typical version generated higher odds of receiving a click than the product-typical, dual-typical and atypical versions. It also lowered campaign costs by between 33% and 63%.
In another study tied to the FIFA World Cup, nearly 71% of participants selected the brand featured in the event-typical ad when their choice was connected to an incentive. The other creative approaches received choice shares below 54%.
For practitioners, this helps move the finding beyond “people said they liked the ad.” Event typicality influenced both digital campaign response and a behavior-based brand choice.
Why event-led creative works
The researchers identified three connected mechanisms behind the results.
1. The event provides an immediate point of recognition
A product-typical ad is easy to categorize because viewers quickly understand that they are seeing an ad for a car, restaurant or skincare product.
Event-typical ads offer a different route to that same feeling of recognition. A viewer may not immediately identify the product category, but a tennis court, starting blocks or familiar competition imagery signals what world the ad belongs to.
The viewer still experiences a sense of understanding: I know what this is connected to.
For creative teams, that means the ad does not necessarily have to reveal everything immediately. But it should give the audience enough recognizable information to place it within a familiar event.
2. The unexpected connection creates curiosity
An event-typical ad does not look exactly the way consumers expect an ad for the product to look. That creates a manageable question: What does this brand have to do with this event?
The key is that the question feels answerable. The viewer can recognize the event and has an incentive to make sense of the brand’s role within it.
This differs from confusion for confusion’s sake. Creative that is simply obscure may demand more attention than consumers are willing to give it. Effective event-typical advertising creates a small information gap while providing enough context for the viewer to close it.
3. The event lends some of its meaning to the brand
Major sporting events carry established associations. Depending on the event, consumers may connect them with excitement, achievement, popularity, prestige, national identity or tradition.
When an ad is strongly categorized as part of that event, some of those qualities can transfer to the advertised brand.
In the Wimbledon study, for example, the researchers measured whether participants associated the advertised brand with qualities such as “iconic” and “popular”—attributes already strongly connected with the tournament.
This is one reason event imagery should do more than serve as seasonal decoration. The event is not merely attracting attention. It is supplying meaning that the brand may be able to borrow.
Why showing both the product and the event may backfire
One of the most useful findings challenges what may seem like the safest creative compromise.
A marketer might assume that an ad should include obvious event cues while still making the product category completely clear. In theory, this dual-typical approach offers the best of both worlds: immediate product recognition and a strong event connection.
That is not what the studies found.
Dual-typical ads never performed best. At two- and five-second exposures, they fell behind event-typical ads and, in some tests, even atypical ads.
The researchers suggest that asking viewers to activate both schemas at once may introduce ambiguity. Is the ad primarily about the product, or is it about the event? That competition can weaken the feeling of recognition and make it more difficult for the event’s attributes to transfer cleanly to the brand.
The lesson is not that a product must disappear. It is that marketers should resist treating event creative as a standard product ad with a trophy, stadium or seasonal tagline added to it.
The event needs to provide the organizing idea.
What this means for campaign development
For marketers planning around a major event, the research points to several practical considerations:
Identify the event’s most recognizable cues: These could include its setting, rituals, visual symbols, host location, style of competition or emotional atmosphere. The strongest cue may not be the official logo.
The goal is to use elements that audiences immediately connect with the event, not simply imagery that feels generally athletic or celebratory.
Choose associations strategically: Consider which qualities audiences already connect with the event and whether those are qualities the brand genuinely wants to reinforce. A brand may want to borrow the energy of a fast-paced competition, the prestige of a historic tournament or the sense of shared identity surrounding an international event. The creative should be built with those intended associations in mind.
Build from the event outward: Begin the creative process with the event’s world rather than starting with a conventional product ad and looking for places to add event references. That may mean placing the brand logo, packaging or product in a supporting role while the setting, concept and message are led by the event.
Give the viewer a connection to resolve: The brand’s presence should feel somewhat unexpected but still understandable. Curiosity works when the audience can make sense of the relationship. If the connection is too obvious, the ad may not generate much curiosity. If it is too obscure, the viewer may simply move on.
Test the complete execution: An ad may appear event-relevant to the creative team without being immediately recognizable to the target audience. The paper emphasizes that event typicality is based on consumer perception. What feels strongly connected to an event for one audience may not carry the same meaning for another, and the most recognizable elements may change over time. Testing should therefore examine more than whether people like the ad. Marketers should also ask whether viewers recognize the event, understand the brand connection and associate the intended qualities with the brand.
Match the strategy to the event: The studies focused primarily on highly visible sporting events with strong, generally positive associations. A smaller, unfamiliar or controversial event may not offer the same recognition or attribute-transfer benefits. Before building a campaign around an event, marketers should consider how familiar it is to the audience, what associations it carries and whether those associations align with the brand.
The opportunity may extend beyond sports
The researchers also explored whether consumers recognize similar creative patterns around other occasions. In a follow-up study, more than 75% of respondents identified ads featuring familiar Christmas or Halloween imagery as event-typical.
That suggests the principle could extend to holidays, festivals and other culturally prominent moments. It may also apply beyond advertising to event-themed emails, organic social content, direct marketing and product placement.
Still, the larger principle is more useful than simply compiling a calendar of events.
When consumers already possess a clear mental picture of an occasion, brands may be able to use that shared understanding to communicate quickly, create curiosity and acquire meaningful associations.
The strongest creative may not be the ad that shows the most. It may be the ad that chooses one recognizable world—and commits to it.
About the Research
Why advertisers should embrace event typicality and maximize leveraging of major events
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS); Volume 52 (2024)
Authors:
Citation:
Carrillat, F.A., Mazodier, M. & Eckert, C. Why advertisers should embrace event typicality and maximize leveraging of major events. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 52, 1585–1607 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01012-1
From the Authors
What specific relevant marketing challenge(s) does your article address?
The article addresses the conflict between the traditional marketing theory of "consistency" (using product-typical ads to facilitate quick recognition) and the practice of "adaptation" (using event-typical ads linked to major events like the Olympics). The core problem is determining whether adapting ads to events is effective under constrained ad exposure times (e.g., ranging between 100 msec and 5 seconds) in comparison to the "gold standard" of product-typical ads.
What companies/organizations/industries will benefit from your findings?
The following entities would benefit significantly:
Advertisers and Brand Managers: Particularly those investing in campaigns around major sporting events (e.g., Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup, Wimbledon).
Sponsors: Official partners of events looking to maximize leveraging efficacy.
Ambush Marketers: Brands attempting to associate with events without official rights.
Event Organizers: Organizations like the IOC or FIFA that manage sponsorship rights.
Advertising and sponsorship agencies: Professionals managing event-related campaigns for which consumer attention spans are minimal.
How can the recommendations from your findings specifically be implemented?
Advertisers can identify the most typical elements of an event through surveys or by analyzing prior ad campaigns featuring the event and its related elements to develop new creatives based on them.
What outcomes would be expected?
Event-typical ads improve ad liking, brand attitude, engagement, and cost-efficiency.
