30 September saw Team GB launch a new marketing campaign called ‘This Is What Makes Us’ which will run up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Timed to leverage spiking athletics interest around the IAAF’s World Championships in Dhoa (Qatar) and to raise the profiles of the first wave of confirmed Team GB athletes who have secured one of the 378 expected squad spots for the Games and whose names will be announced during the first weeks of October.
The first group named was a set of 12 sailors – including Rio 2016 gold medallists Hannah Mills and Giles Scott.
The initiative sees the rights-owner, the British Olympic Association (BOA), set out to celebrate the team’s diversity and that of the nation as a whole and the campaign has been crafted to try and bring the nation together.
It will also celebrate the personal stories behind some of the athletes who will compete at Tokyo and to highlight the fact that no story will be the same.
The campaign launch was spearheaded by a spot voiced by UK Olympic gold medallist Kate Richardson-Walsh (who won Team GB’s first women’s hockey gold at the Rio 2016 Games) and which celebrates ‘overcoming the odds, courage, diversity and success that creates the one team ethos’.
The hero film features several iconic Team GB Olympians from the recent past: including Sir Chris Hoy, Nicola Adams, Laura Kenny and Sir Mo Farah.
The insight and idea behind the launch works is that ‘Team GB has an opportunity to show the world that our differences aren’t our weakness, they are our greatest strength. When we come together, anything is possible. This is what makes us.’
The campaign hashtag is #BelieveInExtraordinary and the creative executions aim to drive UK fans to subscribe to the team’s various social channels to drive following and fandom on the road to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Team GB, the unified Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team, is run by the British Olympic Association, worked with the Sports and Partnership Marketing team at Hill + Knowlton Strategies (Team GB’s communications partner) on the initiative.
Olympic gold medallist Kate Richardson-Walsh, said: “As athletes, the journey for us begins as children hoping to fulfil a dream. Without the support of friends, family, coaches and fans, this dream would never become a reality. Of the athletes that will compete in Tokyo, not one single story will be the same. They will have faced ecstatic highs and devastating lows, all with the hope of one day putting on the Team GB kit, competing on the greatest sporting stage and doing the nation proud – ‘This Is What Makes Us’ tells that story in the most perfect way.
Josh Connell, Head of Content Publishing, Sports, Hill + Knowlton said: “There isn’t a brand more capable of uniting us than Team GB. At a time when Britain feels more divided than ever, ‘This Is What Makes Us’ is a reminder of our similarities, and a celebration of our differences. In the run-up to Tokyo, we’ll give the British public the best news they’ve heard in ages – the Olympic Games is less than a year away.”
Comment:
Most team campaigns set out to boost support and unite fans behind an umbrella cause and there is no question that Britain is more divided than at any time in recent memory.
But whether its sports stars can help unite the country in a longer term, meaningful way remains to be seen.
That will be partly up to the people and the politicians.
Speaking of which, this initiative also follows on from a new British Government initiative, entitled “Sport is GREAT’ which launched in July and continues to evolve through various events.
Team GB finished third in the medal table at Rio 2016, earning 27 gold medals, 23 silver and 17 bronze and is expected to be represented by a team of around 378 athletes at Tokyo 2020.
Links:
Team GB
https://www.facebook.com/TeamGB
https://www.twitter.com/TeamGB
https://www.instagram.com/teamgb
https://www.tiktok.com/@TeamGB
Snapchat: teamgb
Hill + Knowlton Strategies
https://www.hkstrategies.com/sectors/sports/
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