The Winter Olympics are over, and everyone has an opinion. Some are declaring that Canada crushed it while others are asking what went wrong. Social feeds are full of highlights, hot takes, and highlights of the highlights. Many watched. Many felt something. And now, everyone is an expert.
That’s not a sports debate. That’s a measurement problem – and it shows up in every boardroom, not just the ones with hockey highlights on the screen.
The Metric You Choose Tells the Story You Want to Tell
Go by total medals and Canada’s 21 lands below our stronger historical performances. Focus on gold and we edged out the previous Games by one. Narrow it to the sports Canadians actually care about – hockey and curling – and the picture gets more complicated. Benchmark against population size or dollars invested and the story shifts again.
None of those lenses are wrong. But here’s the problem: most organizations never decide which lens they’re using before the event begins.
They activate. They spend. They watch. And then, when it’s time to report back, they scan the results for the number that tells the most comfortable story.
That’s not measurement. That’s narrative management after the fact. And the room will see through the difference.
Define the Win Before You Buy the Ticket
The brands that walk out of an Olympics — or any major advertising investment — ready to make clear decisions and drive action are rarely the ones who figured it out at the end. They’re the ones who defined success before anything went live.
That definition needs to do three things:
- Build the scorecard before the opening ceremony. Agree on what you’re measuring, how you’re measuring it, and what good looks like before a single dollar is spent. A scorecard built after the fact will always find a way to tell a convenient story.
- Be specific enough to be unambiguous. Not “increase brand awareness” – that’s a direction, not a destination. The metric needs to be meaningful and directly linked to what the business actually cares about.
- Know what actions the results will drive. A measurement framework only has value if the business is prepared to act on what it finds. Before the event, get alignment from key stakeholders on what decisions will be made based on the results — and hold to that agreement after the fact.
Leave these things vague, and you’ll spend more time defending your methodology than acting on your findings.
Manage the Emotional Climate in the Room Before It Manages You
Once you have your data, you’re not done. In fact, you may only be halfway there.
The Olympics are never just about the numbers. After two weeks of watching the near misses, the upsets, and the moments that made them stop scrolling, your audience has already formed opinions before the results were in or your deck was even built.
Walking in with a table of results and expecting it to speak for itself is a missed opportunity at best, and a credibility risk at worst.
The story must be told – and it needs to be wrapped in the human moments that defined the Games. The athlete who came back from injury to stand on the podium. The curling team that went to the final end. The watch parties where strangers became temporary neighbours. These are the stories that captured the attention of the country. They’re already in the room waiting for you.
But brand performance and medal performance aren’t the same scoreboard. What people remember from the Games rarely follows a predictable script – and it doesn’t sort neatly by outcome. That emotional climate is already shaping what questions will be asked in your debrief, and how generously your numbers will get read.
Your analysis must be rooted in the data – that’s non-negotiable. But your audience isn’t neutral. Acknowledging the mood in the room before you open your deck is what creates the conditions for your data to be heard.
Numbers embedded in a well-structured narrative don’t compete with emotion. They work with it. A great business story means nothing without a learning and decision at the end.
The Question Worth Asking Before the Next Investment
The brands that came out of these Games with a story worth telling didn’t get lucky. Someone in the room decided to do it differently. They chose rigour over comfort, narrative over noise – and showed up with answers, not defences. That decision is available to anyone willing to ask a better question first.
Most post-mortems ask: what did we get for what we spent? The better question is: did we know what we were trying to prove — and did we build the story to show it?
When the answer is yes, you walk into that budget review with something more valuable than a number. You walk in with a point of view. Clearly held. Well told. Connected to a decision that needs to be made.
That’s what earns the next conversation. And the one after that.
Laura Warren (Storylytics) and Dan Alvo (Khlumus Consulting) share a belief that the best business decisions start with the right question and end with a story worth telling. Between them, they’ve been in enough boardrooms to know that the best data in the world won’t save a story that isn’t told well. If this resonates, they’d love to hear from you.