Entering its ninth year, RBC’s Training Ground talent search program is once again a primary subject of the bank’s marketing ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games.
RBC recently released creative for its campaigns in partnership with the Canadian Olympic Committee, timed to this summer’s Paris Games. The bank’s Paris campaign includes three ad spots centered around success stories of athletes who have graduated from the bank’s Training Ground program to qualify for the Olympics.
The RBC Training Ground program sees the bank work with the Canadian Olympic Committee, a longtime partner, as well as 11 national sports organizations and regional sports institutes to host free events across the country where athletes aged between 14 and 25 are assessed for high-performance potential in Olympic. It’s identified more than 1,600 athletes as having Olympic potential, and is sending a record 16 graduates of the program to the Olympics this year.
The bank’s Paris campaign this year includes the “Hockey Here” spot which features Krissy Scurfield, a hockey player from Canmore, Alberta who attended Training Ground in 2021, and has since risen through the ranks at Rugby Canada to become an offensive threat for the women’s 7s team. The campaign also includes “Here Together,” which tells the story of Canada’s women’s sprint track cycling team who had never tried the sport before participating in Training Ground, including Tokyo Games gold medalist Kelsey Mitchell.
A third spot, “Decathlon Here,” features Pierce LePage, one of the first notable athletes to be identified through Training Ground. The spot focuses on the lifestyle of an international athlete and how it is enabled by RBC services like the international money transfer banking function on RBC’s mobile app.
“The main goal is to just do justice to the RBC Training Ground program itself, and the athletes who have put in such hard work to get to the Olympic Games,” RBC senior director of brand marketing Mark Thomas says.
The campaign is part of RBC’s partnership with the Canadian Olympic Committee, which dates back to 1947. Thomas says the goal of this year’s campaign is to take the stories of LePage and the newer athletes featured in the creative, and leverage them to bring to life RBC’s product offerings.
Thomas says that the Training Ground program has been well-aligned to RBC’s commitment to support Canadian youth by investing in the country’s young athletes, and reshaping how athletes are recruited and developed. He adds that RBC believes its broader sponsorship strategy and Olympic partnership is aligned with its purpose to help clients thrive and communities prosper
“Sport helps to build character, it teaches valuable life lessons and helps to foster healthy communities,” Thomas says.
Dentsu and Holiday Films developed the creative for the campaign, which is tied to RBC’s “Ideas Happen Here” platform. The campaign is airing on the CBC, Radio-Canada, Google, YouTube, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and all of RBC’s owned and employee channels. The campaign’s media buy was led by Initiative.
RBC’s Olympic advertising also includes being a title sponsor on Olympic Games Morning, a six-hour daily block of live Olympic coverage on the CBC including athlete interviews, and sports recaps and highlights. The show will be hosted from the Canada Olympic House for the first time. The brand will also bring back RBC Spotlight this year, a long-running content series that amplifies the stories of its Training Ground graduates at the Games.
