Be The Heartbeat

CHALLENGE

Nissan was one of the sponsors of Team GB and ParalympicsGB at the 2016 Olympics, and our challenge was to help make people aware of the sponsorship while also exploiting the unexpected access that Nissan had with some of the key athletes taking part in the Games. 

SOLUTION

To achieve this we gave the public a chance to show their support by training in real-time with three athletes representing Britain in the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016 (runner Richard Whitehead – 2012 Paralympic gold medallist, gymnast Max Whitlock – 2015 World Champion, and rower Kat Copeland – 2012 Olympic gold medallist). By linking up via digital devices, participants were able to access a live stream of the athletes and interact with them as they held an hour long training session. The fruits of the live training session, including user-generated content from the public, subsequently fed into the hero brand film that launched during the countdown to the start of the Olympic Games in Rio.

RESULTS

The promo film launched two weeks before the live training event, and was watched by an audience of 1.3 million, many of whom tuned in on the cold February morning to train. During the session Max, Kat and Richard fielded hundreds of comments from individual participants and teams who were live-streaming the event, with user-generated footage being sent through from participants across the country, as well as a few international submissions from places as far as way as Johannesburg.