By Martin Vedris
SYDNEY: Panasonic will launch an Olympic advertising campaign during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games opening ceremony. The campaign is to communicate Panasonic’s involvement in bringing the first-ever entirely full High Definition Olympic Games to Australian viewers.
Creative agency The Campaign Palace developed and produced a series of 60, 30 and 10 second television commercials for the campaign.
Panasonic’s advertisement features the footage of 11 Australian Olympic Games athletes as children, captured on family home videos. The footage is not staged or scripted and uses real home movie footage of the athletes to providing a genuine authenticity to the campaign.
The young athletes are seen splashing, swimming, riding, rowing, sliding, hitting and running in amateur home movies, captured by their parents.
The athletes include Bronte Barratt, Ky Hurst (Swimming), Tamsyn Lewis (Athletics), Duncan Free (Rowing), Donna MacFarlane (Steeplechaser), Megan Jones (Show jumping), Glenn Warfe (Badminton), Dani Samuels (Discus), Erin Phillips (Basketball) Courtney Atkinson (Triathlon) and Brad Newley (Basketball).
This home movie footage will be viewed by an expected Australian television audience of over four million when it airs in the first commercial spot of the Opening Ceremony telecast on 8 August.
The ad, set to the well known Queen anthem ‘Don’t stop me now’, communicates the following message: “Our athletes have been filmed all their lives, but no-one’s ever seen them like they’ll see them in Beijing”.
The ad is intended to evoke the determination and drive shown by the athletes throughout their lives to become Olympians. And make that same association with Panasonic’s commitment to developing leading technologies in the company’s more than 20 years of Olympic partnership.
“We are incredibly proud of this campaign, which reinforces Australians’ love of sport and Panasonic’s ongoing commitment to the Olympic ideals. It will most definitely prove to be a standout commercial of this year’s Olympic Games” said Panasonic Australia marketing communications manager, Gemma Lemieux.
Gathering the footage for the ad was a huge task for the production team. Researchers spent months speaking with families and sorting through hours of supplied video footage. The total production time was four months.
Panasonic’s television commercials will be aired during Channel 7’s Olympic Games Broadcast from 8 – 24 August, 2008.