Air Canada is using its latest brand spot ahead of the 2024 Paris Games to celebrate not just its role in bringing athletes to the Olympics, but also in bringing newcomers to Canada.
The airline launched its “Ticket to Dream” brand spot this week, the centrepiece of its Olympic and Paralympic campaigns this year. The spot is designed to inspire fans while celebrating athletes, showing a young couple moving to Canada and an athlete determined to achieve her Olympic dream, capturing a shared resilience before revealing a twist to their stories.
The campaign is designed to stoke excitement among fans of Team Canada, while also celebrating the pride the brand feels in transporting athletes to the Games, as well as in bringing newcomers to Canada, says the company’s senior director of brand strategy and content marketing John Xydous.
Xydous notes that the Olympics are a competitive season for brands, with many running Olympic-themed spots of their own. While other brands outspend Air Canada on media, he notes, the company leans harder on connecting with consumers through stories in its marketing. Cutting through the clutter of competition comes down to telling a story your brand can own, Xydous says, and provokes an emotional reaction from viewers.
“I feel like we connected on both of those,” Xydous tells strategy. “This story is something that’s unique to Air Canada, and every time that we’ve shared this, people have reacted very positively and emotionally.”
The work is the latest in the brand’s relationship with the Canadian Olympic team, having served as its official airline since 1988. It’s also served as the official airline of the Paralympic team since 2007.
The new creative is directed at all Canadians, and Xydous says the brand wanted to celebrate the first in-person Games in years.
“Even if you’re not a fan of a specific sport, we’re seeing that Canadians have immense pride in the athletes that are representing this country,” Xydous says. “[The campaign] speaks to fans of the Games for sure, but all Canadians are behind these athletes, so we wanted to play our role in amplifying their stories and the passion that Canadians feel for these athletes.”
FCB Toronto executive creative director Jeremiah McNama says he loved the script for the spot, because it shows how one dream connects to another, adding that the company’s brief was all about that idea of connecting dreams to the brand.
“It takes a lot of determination, perseverance and sacrifice to move to a new country. The same can be said about an athlete competing for Team Canada. In this case, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and those traits were passed on from one generation to another,” McNama tells strategy.
The spot was released to the brand’s social media platforms on Wednesday, and will premiere on TV, in cinemas and online on July 26, the day of the Olympic opening ceremony. FCB developed the creative and strategy behind the campaign, with Weber Shandwick handling PR and Initiative working on the media buy.
The campaign will run in 30-, 60- and 90-second versions on TV during the Olympics and Paralympics. The 90-second spot will run in cinemas from July 26 to Aug. 11, while all formats will be found online along with a longer two-and-a-half-minute version and shorter 15-second format.
