Long term Olympic partner Visa’s Winter Olympic activation is spearheaded by a flagship commercial called ‘New Finish Lines’.
This 60-second brand film, developed in tandem with agency BBDO, features many of the brand’s Olympian endorsers and these athlete ambassadors are playing a key role in amplifying the creative by sharing various cuts and edits across their own social media channels ahead of its TV broadcast debut.
Driven by a reworked version of Irving Berlin’s ‘Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better’, the hero film focuses on the desire and determination amongst winter athletes’ to dig deep and overcome adversity and injury in their quest for glory.
And, naturally, they are also shown seamlessly and smoothly purchasing plenty of products using various Visa payment methods.
The hero spot initially debuted digitally and socially across Visa’s own global channels on 18 January and since then almost all of the 54 members of the IOC payments partner’s Olympic and Paralympic endorser stable are amplifying the creative on their own channels.
Between them, these endorsers span 21 different countries and 15 different sports – ensuring the Visa campaign is getting plenty of social engagement around the world ahead of the Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.
One of the first to socially share the creative was Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris – who also appears in the full length spot’s opening scenes – on Instagram.
McMorris has recently recovered from a serious sporting injury which occurred during the British Columbia backcountry in March 2017 and the themes and messages of his Visa work revolve around personal strength and dedication (a common theme across much of the creative leveraging PyeongChang 2018.
McMorris has been followed by an avalanche of winter athletes spanning South Korean speed skater Park Seung-Hi,
and US skier Mikaela Shiffrin,
to Polish ski jumper Kamil Stoch.
“When it came time to launch the film, we couldn’t have asked for a better medium than the athletes’ own social media channels,” said Visa chief marketer Lynne Biggar.
Comment:
Contractually obligated athlete ambassador amplification?
Despite the theme of injury, recovery and balancing trepidation about the future and uplifting storytelling (with a touch of fear thrown in for good measure) being a fairly common creative approach to activating this year’s Winter Olympics, this work feels fairly fresh, direct and relatable.
It contrasts with the costumed superhero comic creative approach of other sponsors such as United Airlines (see case study) and even the BBC’s PyeongChang 2018 ident (see case study).
As for the heavy volume of Visa transactional vignettes….well, some might suggest that the modern Olympics is as much about money as it is about sport.
This core campaign phase follows Visa’s earlier Pyeongchang 2018 tease work: such as its December PR-led activation around its wearable tech Winter Olympic range; (which includes payment stickers, pins and gloves (see case study).
But, the ‘New Finish Line’ big idea itself links in to some other previous Visa sports sponsorship work such as its October 2017 NFL ‘Million Yard Line’ spot starring Julio Jones.
It also marks a tweak in activation approach from its Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic campaign (see case study).
Links:
Visa
https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/sponsorships-promotions/olympics-partnership.html.
@visa
BBDO
IOC
https://www.youtube.com/user/olympic
https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/
https://www.facebook.com/OlympicChannel/
https://www.instagram.com/olympicchannel/
https://twitter.com/olympicchannel
PyeongChang 2018
https://www.pyeongchang2018.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/PyeongChang201
https://twitter.com/PyeongChang2018
https://www.facebook.com/PyeongChang2018
https://www.instagram.com/pyeongchang2018/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pyeongchang2018_kr
http://www.weibo.com/pyeongchang2018
