Canadian Olympic Committee

"We Are Winter"

There's one thing that's shaped Canadians more than any other: the country's cold, harsh, unforgiving winters. Canadian have all been pummeled by winter. But these winters don't kill us, they just make us stronger.

For the Canadian Olympic Committee, Proximity took this deep connection and turned it into a unified rallying cry for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games to support Canada's athletes. It became the insight that #WeAreWinter was built on. The strategy was to create a strikingly different campaign that was inherently social and which Canadians could feel for themselves and actively become a part of.

Proximity launched an epic 60–second spot during the NHL Winter Classic. The spot featured Canadian athletes at their personal crossroads with winter and that which spur each athlete towards greatness. Voiceovers featured Canadian verse specifically about winter including one from poet Leonard Cohen.

Every spot ended with something every Canadian could relate to: the hashtag #WeAreWinter. It was a rallying cry to unite our nation and show support for Canadian athletes.

The #WeAreWinterhashtag became a part of Canadians' digital lexicon and as a call–to–action, it established the campaign as a digital "conversation." It allowed the nation to take part and have a voice – from rallying around Canadian athletes on Twitter and sharing digital video content on Olympic.ca to cheering on Facebook and donating their status through Thunderclap!

Fans were invited to join the biggest online cheer ever during the Opening Ceremonies by donating their social status on the org's Thunderclap page. Canadians across the country donated their status and the very moment our Canadian athletes took the field in Sochi, the message thundered through social channels, garnering a reach of more than 1.3 million – Thunderclap's most successful ever.

#WeAreWinter drove Canadians to exclusive content including athlete bio films on Olympic.ca, fan engagements on Facebook, photos and Twitter. The campaign was ignited and supported by a mass awareness push including TV, print and OOH with our hashtag at the heart of every piece of communication.

Campaign awareness was 30% vs 25% goal (prior campaigns 21%, 9%) and the Canadian Olympic Team awareness was 97%. More than three billion impressions were tracked overall, and Olympic.ca receieved 4.4 million visits. More than 1.3 million Canadians donated their status to the Thunderclap page.