Lima 2019 Campaign

#TeamPanamSports

BACKGROUND

The Lima 2019 Pan American Games were the 17th edition of the American continent’s largest and most important multisport event. Despite their storied history dating back to 1951, the interest and awareness of the Games fell far behind other major international sporting events such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cup. In 2018, the company responsible for the Games — the Pan American Sports Organization — re-branded to be a more modern organization and appeal to the new generation of sports fans throughout the 41 countries that compete in the Games.

Under the new name of Panam Sports and a new team led by President Neven Ilic, the organization began preparing for the next edition of the Games to be held in Lima, Peru in July 2019. As the recently added Communications Manager, I worked with the marketing team to begin promoting Lima 2019 and increase the appeal of the Games to a larger audience, while also helping our organization become a more renowned name in the worldwide Olympic Movement. After more than a year of sending newsletters, magazines and articles on our updated website, we began to brainstorm about our primary campaign to promote the upcoming Games of Lima 2019.

Together, we decided to use Athlete Ambassadors as a tool to increase awareness about the level of talent at the Games to raise the stakes and interest in the competitions across a variety of sports. We included athletes from different countries to show the scope and importance of the Games throughout the region. The inaugural members of Team Panam Sports were Nathan Adrian (USA), Mariana Pajon (Colombia), Yulimar Rojas (Venezuela), Alexandra Grande (Peru), Arthur Zanetti (Brazil), Luisito Pie (Dominican Republic), Paula Pareto (Argentina), Rommel Pacheco (Mexico) and Briana Williams (Jamaica).

EXECUTION

In the development phase, I was tasked with writing the campaign script and contacting athletes to join the campaign. As the first commercial ever created by the Organization, I decided to focus solely on the athletes and basic information about the Pan Am Games to convey the scope and high-level performances that could be expected at the Games to increase anticipation for the event. The athletes were stars in their own countries but we hoped to turn them into continental superstars in the lead up to and through the conclusion of the event.

Due to our limited budget and time, we flew all of the athletes to Miami for an intensive content-creation weekend. We hired one videographer and one photographer to capture the imagery under the direction of myself and my two colleagues. Our small team of three coordinated the arrivals and departures (often driving to the airport ourselves to pick the athletes up), athlete schedules and directed the athletes, photographer and videographer on the type of content we wanted as well as the look and feel of the imagery. We even invited select media such as ESPN to conduct their own interviews with the athletes to use to promote the Games that would be broadcast on their channels, fitting them into the already tight schedule for each of the nine athletes.

After the content was captured, I worked closely with the videographer to produce the edited final cut of the commercial. When our team determined he was not able to deliver the quality we desired, I personally finished editing the video together in the correct sequence before passing off the video to an agency to add the final effects and graphics.

GAMES IMPACT

We launched the official Press Release and advertisement through all of our traditional and digital media channels, featuring an impressive average email open rate of 23.17% in both languages (4.3% average click through rate) and more than 3,000 reads of the Press Release.

The commercial’s debut on YouTube was a tremendous success, amassing more than 200,000 views across the English and Spanish versions following the conclusion of the Games. The commercial was sent out to all broadcast partners of the Games and used in their promotions and coverage. Lima 2019 featured a television audience of more than 300 million viewers across 1,000 hours of live sport coverage.

The commercial was also played repeatedly inside the competition venues in Peru which welcomed more than 750,000 fans throughout the Games. More than 85 million people interacted with the Panam Sports and Lima 2019 social media accounts during the Games, with these numbers making Lima 2019 the most successful Pan American Games in history in terms of engagement and awareness.

ATHLETE IMPACT

Our goal of increasing the following and fan engagement with all of our Athlete Ambassadors was a tremendous success. The athletes of Team Panam Sports received an average boost of 22.6K followers in their Instagram accounts, with all achieving an increase of at least 5,000 followers after the release of the campaign. Two athletes particularly stood out, as Rommel Pacheco and Briana Williams both ended up not competing at Lima 2019 yet still received boosts of 17,000 and 27,000 followers respectively thanks to the success of the #TeamPanamSports campaign. Mariana Pajon received the biggest boost despite having the most followers before the launch of the campaign, gaining more than 60,000 followers to get her closer to the 2 million follower milestone which she achieved over the next few years.

The athletes also excelled on the field of play, racking up a total of nine medals including six golds. View their stats from the Games in the graphic below.

SPANISH VERSION