Building a podium for gold medal brands
The road to the Olympic Games is paved with brand partnerships that ultimately help viewers share in the journey of Canada’s top athletes.
The Ask
Deliver winning digital experiences on the road to the Olympic Games
In conjunction with their ‘Road to the Olympic Games’ brand partnerships for both the Rio 2016 and Pyeong Chang 2018 Olympic games, CBC Sports approached us to design and develop co-branded digital platforms for the CBC Sports digital team and their Olympic Games partners, including Petro-Canada, Samsung, and VISA.
Our Approach
Connecting a modern audience to the ancient games
With a mandate to work within the overarching brand identity, messaging, and organizational priorities of CBC Sports, CBC Olympics, and each brand partner, we developed distinct digital platforms for each partnership and its respective content. Each project began with strategic planning sessions with senior CBC staff to identify campaign goals and determine the most effective way to deliver our digital creative services to meet these goals. From strategic planning and concept generation to developing engaging copy, imagery, video, and interactive web experiences, we worked closely with CBC to deliver unilingual and bilingual digital experiences within unforgiving deadlines dictated by global sporting events.
The Bond Presented by Petro-Canada
Building a home for Olympic hopefuls
Since 1988, Petro-CanadaTM has supported over 3,000 aspiring Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls. Petro-CanadaTM‘s Fuelling Athletes and Coaching Excellent (FACE) program supports up-and-coming amateur athletes and their coaches when they need it most - while striving to represent Canada at the Olympic or Paralympic Games - but don’t yet qualify for government funding.
With over $10 million in funding provided to athletes since the program’s inception, The Bond website provides a digital presence for the program and focuses on the athletes and their experiences. With a dedicated series for each Olympic cycle, athletes are profiled annually in their respective sports with headshots, bios, and videos.
Samsung Rio on the Edge
From the favelas to your phone
Samsung issued a commemorative 2016 Olympic Games Limited Edition of its Galaxy S7 Edge handset, providing 12,500 of the phones to Olympians for the Games in Rio. To promote the new video capabilities of the phone, Samsung partnered with CBC Sports to send winter Olympians Craig McMorris and Phil Marquis to Rio to share their experiences and life behind the scenes. We designed a visual treatment for the partnership, and designed and developed a responsive site that would house the video content McMorris and Marquis were capturing and editing on their phones.
Visa VR
A 360-degree view of the Olympic Games
Rio 2016 was the first time the Olympic Games would be broadcast in 360-degree video. To supplement the regular CBC Olympics broadcast of the Games, we built the Visa VR site that included a custom content schedule that was tied into the Olympic itinerary of events. Depending on their device, visitors could experience the Olympics in 360 video or Virtual Reality. The site itself housed the desktop 360-degree feeds, and the mobile version accessed the accelerometer and gyrometer of the user’s phone to provide a 360-degree view of the event. For a full VR experience, users could use their phone in conjunction with the Samsung Gear headset.
Samsung VR
Going for the gold with Virtual Reality in real time
Stemming from the success of 360 video during the Rio Olympics, Samsung wanted to deliver the experience directly to viewers of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. With a unique visual treatment for the site, visitors could experience the Olympic schedule of events in real time, either in 360-degree video on desktop or mobile, or in full VR using their phone and their Samsung Gear headset.
What We've Learned
There's no room for error in a gold medal game
With a national and global audience of millions, we had helped CBC Sports and their Olympic Games brand partners connect with a younger, more digitally engaged audience using targeted messaging and creative content, and advanced mobile technology. As a result, CBC Sports embraced the importance of developing quality digital products and turned to Form & Affect as their go-to provider of digital creative services.
Form and Affect continues to meet and exceed our expectations. They’ve been instrumental in delivering value to our Winter Olympic Games sponsors.
Ken Wolff CBC Sports
