NBC hopes to tap into the feel-good sparks coming out of the nation’s Fourth of July celebrations on Saturday by dropping promotional spots for two top priorities into its annual “Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks” special: the 2028 Summer Olympics and its own NBC100 anniversary celebration.
The spots will air during NBC’s coverage on Saturday night of the annual fireworks spectacular over New York’s Hudson River. The event has been a staple of NBC’s Independence Day schedule since 2000.
Jennifer Storms, chief marketing officer for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, said her team has carefully planned the timing of the spots to coincide with the burst of patriotism and celebration around America 250 events. The Olympics and the celebration of NBC’s centennial are both moments in history that NBC is eager to connect in the minds of consumers with the gravitas of the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
“It’s the national connection and shared celebration in this evening that now becomes a stage for us to not just promote other programming but to remind people what NBC has always done best: We bring audiences together around stories, icons, athletes, live moments that feel bigger than any one show,” Storms tells Variety. “It just makes so much sense to be in this [Macy’s Fireworks] telecast to connected that shared experience, the celebration, the national pride to these two events.
The “Team USA” 30-second spot features a montage of past and present Olympic greats including Mary Lou Retton, Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and Noah Lyles. It unabashedly tugs on the heart strings of Olympics fans awaiting the first Games played in the U.S. since the 2002 in Salt Lake City with the tagline, “They’ve always been America’s team. And in 2028, there’s no place like home.”
With the Los Angeles Games now 24 months away, NBCUniversal will steadily increase the level of marketing and Olympics-related content in the coming months to prepare for the big event. The bar is high for NBCU to deliver impressive coverage for an Olympics staged at home, and it also has to compare favorably to its hugely successful coverage of the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.
The focus of NBCU’s marketing messages to come over the next year about the Olympics will be about “this being a buildup, not a countdown,” Storms says. The ballyhoo around the Games that have taken on the shorthand LA28 will mark the longest marketing campaign that NBC has executed for any single Games. It began with the closing ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Games in February.
“This is a shared preparation across America. How we talk about it is, ‘America, let’s get ready to host the world.’ This will now be our longest, largest campaign ever for an Olympics,” Storms says. “This will be two years of the buildup. This national story but it’s also a brand story and an audience-building story for us, and it reminds viewers that LA 28 will be them probably more than just the competition. This is about identity, pride, nostalgia, you know, togetherness, aspiration, all of those things that people hope for and want in their lives.”
The NBC100 spot, titled “Our Story,” connects past and present by promoting NBC’s upcoming fall lineup while also leaning in to NBC’s storied past and the NBC100 brand theme that began earlier this year. A 30-second cut will air during the Macy’s special while NBC will unveil a 60-second cut on its social platforms.
“The NBC100 spot asks what has NBC meant to audiences for 100 years, and what are we will mean for the next 100 years,” Storms says. Across all of the NBC100 efforts, they’ve sought to balance the allure of nostalgia with the emphasis that NBC remains a leader and innovator in media.
“There’s a real emotional equity that people have for NBC and now with Peacock. It connects with people,” Storms says. “That’s the unique situation we’re in, where we can bring nostalgia to life, but also then connect it with what’s new, what’s next, and how consumers are going to engage with us in the future.”