How a fake coffee stand helped us retain our Olympic audience

Every two years, KGW soaks up a generous ratings bump during the Olympics. And every two years, that bump vanishes the moment the torch goes out. For Paris 2024, we wanted more than a temporary lift—we wanted a lasting audience shift.

I started planning a year out, with a focused strategy: hammer home our key brand messages during the Games, then follow with an aggressive digital campaign on Fire TV and YouTube TV to reinforce what viewers had just seen.

Our offsite brainstorm surfaced dozens of campaign ideas. The favorite? A fake coffee stand in a real park, staffed by our actual Sunrise team. We walked away with great ideas for each of our brand tentpoles, but I decided to focus our budget and effort on one: Sunrise. Morning news is the most critical part of a station’s lineup, bringing in the largest share of revenue and the largest, most habitual viewership. The coffee cart would be our single Olympic campaign.

Skyler Stever and Joseph DeGise transformed the idea into a pop-up café with engaging visuals and viewers talking about their favorite news team. It was a brilliant, subtle shift in the idea. At its heart this campaign is just a smart, well-disguised testimonial.

Production was ambitious: 30 shots in four hours, on location, with on-air talent playing baristas while real viewers delivered their lines. And thanks to a lot of careful planning, it worked—on time, on budget, and even better than expected. A round of audience testing confirmed it: a bit of initial confusion, followed by a clear understanding of the message. Just enough tension to hold your attention.

The campaign ran throughout the Olympics, one spot roughly every hour. After the Games, we continued the messaging on digital platforms for a full month, then shifted to a weather-centric message for the fall.

The result: a 27% jump in Sunrise viewership. And then, it just… held. Months later, the audience was still there.

Mission accomplished.

Update: In June 2025, the Sunrise Coffee Cart campaign won the Northwest Regional Emmy Award for news promotion.

• Director: Joseph DeGise
• Photographer: Skyler Stever