Offi­cial spon­sors aside, hun­dreds of brands will be fight­ing for con­sumer atten­tion through social con­tent efforts aimed at reach­ing peo­ple in places where they will nat­u­ral­ly be hav­ing Olympics-relat­ed con­ver­sa­tions. But, as we’ve seen with recent miss­es, enter­ing the cul­tur­al dia­logue in a time­ly and authen­tic way with­out a strat­e­gy is no easy task.

With the Rio 2016 Olympics just months away, mar­keters are already gear­ing up for what will be the year’s biggest cul­tur­al event. Brands are expect­ed to dole out more than $1 bil­lion in tele­vi­sion spend – and that doesn’t include the bevy of con­tent and expe­ri­ences that will flood people’s feeds and streams come August. Here are three quick tips for brands seek­ing a spot on the podi­um this sum­mer.

1. Find Out If (Or Where) Your Brand Fits

Major cul­tur­al events, like award shows and sports games, have a unique abil­i­ty to bring house­holds togeth­er. As friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers hud­dle up on the liv­ing room couch to watch the dra­ma unfold, con­sid­er how your prod­ucts might fit with­in this at-home view­ing expe­ri­ence. Steal a page from Pep­peridge Farm’s play­book: Ahead of this year’s Super Bowl, the brand com­mis­sioned food­ie and par­ent­ing influ­encers to cre­ate con­tent that would align the brand with at-home snack­ing dur­ing the Big Game. Absent a flashy :30 or :60 spot on screen, Gold­fish was able to get into the con­ver­sa­tion in a way that was both time­ly and rel­e­vant to busy moms.

2. Prepare For The Unexpected

Mil­len­ni­als are twice as like­ly to be inter­est­ed in the cul­tur­al chat­ter that sur­rounds the games than their non-Mil­len­ni­al coun­ter­parts. That’s because Gen Y con­sumers live in a world of memes, GIFs, and retweets. Plan to uti­lize user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent to fuel your con­tent strat­e­gy. Set­ting up a news­room dur­ing the games is a giv­en for brands pri­or­i­tiz­ing a real-time approach to social media con­tent. While these types of “com­mand cen­ters” might elic­it an eye roll from RTM-fatigued mar­keters, they can be much sim­pler than they sound. The keys are to have the tools need­ed to get in front of meme-wor­thy moments as they hap­pen and to have the per­son­nel on call to quick­ly make approvals before post­ing. Anoth­er way to fill your con­tent pipeline is to invite your audi­ences into the sto­ry­telling process. Whirlpool is a brand that has had great suc­cess in this vein; their large-scale ad cam­paign from 2015 asked fam­i­lies to show­case their every­day acts of care in the home via social con­tent. The brand was able to repur­pose the UGC as part of an ever­green con­tent strat­e­gy, and the user-gen­er­at­ed sto­ries often out­per­formed the brand’s more finessed con­tent.

3. Partner With Relevant Content Creators

Influ­encer mar­ket­ing doesn’t mean pay­ing a dig­i­tal celebri­ty big bucks to shill your prod­ucts on Insta­gram. Cre­ator part­ner­ships should be viewed as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bor­row rel­e­vance with­in spe­cif­ic top­ics where part­ner influ­encers have earned the trust of engaged com­mu­ni­ties. Astute cre­ators are already tee­ing up their edi­to­r­i­al cal­en­dars ahead of the Olympics, so now is the time to engage them. Find ways to play into their unique approach­es to con­tent to dri­ve the most engage­ment from their audi­ences and lever­age their sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise to inspire oth­ers to cre­ate and share their own con­tent. P&G has been a con­sis­tent leader in this space with regards to Olympics mar­ket­ing. In sup­port of their pop­u­lar “Thank You Mom” cam­paign, the brand enlists blog­gers to ampli­fy the con­ver­sa­tion and encour­ages their fol­low­ers to join in. The approach ral­lies peo­ple around a pow­er­ful emo­tion­al theme and fos­ters stronger engage­ment across the brand, the influ­encer and their com­mu­ni­ty. While for­mal Olympics part­ner­ships are reserved for a select few part­ners, mar­keters and agency con­tent teams, near­ly every major brand will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion.