Youth Olympic Games
Creative Producer | Content Strategist
Client: The International Olympic Committee
The Youth Olympic Games (or ‘YOG’) was always treated like the forgotten younger sibling of the ‘proper’ Olympic Games. Partly because it was always promoted as such.
So our strategy was to treat it as a different proposition altogether. Not ‘athletes of the future’ but ‘Game Changers of now’ – talented, invested, determined athletes for whom winning (not just ‘taking part’) is their goal.
Across a summer-winter games cycle (Buenos Aires 2018 and Lausanne 2020) we ran a global social, broadcast and experiential campaign with the Olympic Channel, A-list athletes and teams of the world’s most in-demand young influencers.
Both successive campaigns resulted in record digital coverage and engagement and ensured IOC investment in the ‘YOG’ for 2022 and beyond.
We developed a unique (and distinctly non-IOC) look and feel for the Games with a much more playful, energetic and social-first tone than the IOC’s more traditional master brand.
Augmented content allowed us to stamp a fun and energetic identity on to games footage and athlete generated conten, while hundreds of illustrated Snapchat, Tenor and Giphy stickers (launched by Tony Hawk) allowed athletes and fans to use to augment their own content.
But as well as developing a completely independent creative aesthetic, we broke from the IOC’s linear TV focussed approach to games coverage too.
We recruited influencers such as Sky Brown, TBJZL, Max & Harvey and Kaelynn Gobert-Harris to cover the event from a genuine Gen-Z perspective.
And I ran a content studio on the ground in the athlete’s village (The Game Changers Hub) to help over 500 athletes from around the world capture their experience of the Games and develop their social media presence – a key factor in getting sponsorship revenue.