Athletes vs pandemic

Since pandemic hit - we've seen many feel-good, positive, inspirational and motivating stories of people from all walks of life. We've seen front line workers, policemen, the general public and looked at the problem from different categories that we are used to buying into.

Ever wondered how the pandemic has affected athletes? Not the ones who are getting to play now, like cricket, football, etc, but the high performance athletes who rely on events to showcase their weeks of training and compete with the greatest rivals to better themselves? 

This one by Sporcks, a Spanish high-performance socks manufacturer - dedicated for triathlon, cycling and running did just that.



All these high performance athletes depend on an end goal as a way to benchmark their efforts and use it as a carrot to motivate themselves to train, improve and get back to doing better than their earlier performance.


But with the pandemic - all major sports events were cancelled and along with that - all their sweat and toil and sincere wait were washed away.


Without knowing when things would be normal again - these athletes had little time to sit down and think about the situation but had to get up and get back to training.


The film delves into the minds of these high performance athletes, and how they need to rewire their motivations and prime themselves to get up everyday and continue training as rigorously as they would, if there was an end goal, an event they had to participate in.


It's a completely different view of the pandemic from the ones we've seen in the past and one that is inspiring.


Anyone who follows or has trained in the past will feel their pain and their will power to carry on training and pushing themselves with no clear goal at sight. Just the constant push of self improvement, without any exterior competition is harder than it sounds. We could do that for a few weeks - but to do that for an entire year is not something all can understand and empathize with.


Unlike other sports where games are happening without a crowd - these high performance sports don't have the necessary viewership to follow the same route. Crowds and cheering audiences are never a drawing factor in events such as cycling, triathlon and running. It's the people who participate with you that push you to your limits and make you train hard everyday.


The film has been done in Spain and the spots run on the Sporcks website too.


Apart from the ad - they have also done 3 films, each almost 4 minutes long - covering stories of different sports.


Here's a crack at their possible brief:

Problem

With reduced sporting and competitive events, sales of the high performance socks are hitting an all-time low. How do we get consumers to buy our products despite no clear occasions to buy for?

Insight

The events have ended but the training never stops

Strategy

Glorify the training and get into the minds of these athletes to showcase what they go through to push themselves everyday, despite no competitive events at all.

Solution

Bring alive the invisible races that these athletes compete in everyday


These films could very well be done by any of the performance wear brands like Adidas and Nike. But the fact that a retail brand who cater to this niche audience came up with this film goes to show that great stories and ideas are everywhere waiting to be told and unearthed. 

It's not necessary that big brands tell better insightful and compelling stories. Insights are size agnostic but passion driven. The more aggressively passionate the team - the more powerful the insight and the work.

Eventually we all are striving to find an effective creative solution to solve the business problem. And this one has done a fab job. 

What's your view?

 

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