The International Olympic Committee (IOC) today announced the launch of an innovative TV spot as part of its “Show Your Best” global campaign and video competition to help build involvement with the Olympic Movement among young people and create the next generation of Olympic fans. Titled “The Best of Us,” the spot represents the first time user-generated content has been intermixed and put on the same stage with Olympians in a TV commercial.
Created by Cole & Weber United, the commercial draws from amateur video submissions from 175 countries to create a video mosaic of current Olympians – including Michael Phelps, Yelena Isinbayeva and Usain Bolt – demonstrating that the Olympic spirit is in all of us. The spot makes use of proprietary technology that aggregates user-generated content from a site and pulls it into a broadcast unit in a mosaic style.
The spot extends and builds on the IOC's “Show Your Best” platform and its goal of reconnecting young people with the values of the Olympic Movement (excellence, friendship and respect). A global social campaign, “Show Your Best” encourages people from all around the world to demonstrate their personal best with the chance to win a trip to the Olympic Games and appear in a TV ad. Users can record, upload and share their talents and skills on the Olympic site www.olympic.org/showyourbest.
After gathering videos from around the world, Olympic athletes picked the videos that inspired them the most. The winning videos were then used to create the TV spot that will run in hundreds of countries and at the Opening Ceremony, celebrating the best from around the world.
So far, winners have included Ryan Celestain, a US amateur triathlete, and Alfredo Montenegro, a Guatemalan athlete who balances his studies with basketball. Both winners are highlighted in the ad’s mosaic footage.
The TV spot will air on Olympic broadcasters across the world, including NBC (US), CTV (Canada), Foxtel and 9 Network (Australia), Rede Record (Brazil), EuroSport, RAI and SkyItalia (Italy), ZDF (Germany) and ESPN Latin America. In addition, it will be broadcast before Olympic events in the stadiums throughout the Games, including the Opening Ceremony and at LiveSites across the UK. It will also appear on IOC's YouTube channel and other social media sites.
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