Brands:Sainsbury’s and Channel 4
Agency: Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO

Sainsbury’s and Channel 4′s Paralympic Games campaign was deemed “outstanding” by the judges, who said it showed an extraordinary level of detail, with fantastic results that changed the opinions of the nation towards disability generally and disability sport in particular.

“It was an extraordinary Paralympic Games campaign that changed the attitude in this country forever,” they said.

The supermarket and the broadcaster, neither of which had previously been involved in the Paralympic Games, collaborated to challenge existing perceptions of disability. Sainsbury’s approach to activation was ‘Here’s to extraordinary’, which set a positive tone. Its work was split into three distinct areas: turning Sainsbury’s staff into advocates; engaging communities through work with schools; and engaging customers both in and out of stores. The Paralympic Torch visited 550 supermarkets, and 12,000 tickets to attend the Games were given to customers.

Channel 4 set out to champion the Paralympics as the equal to the Olympics, with the aim of scheduling its coverage as a mainstream event, seeking out huge audience figures.

The broadcaster used innovative, longitudinal research to devise and shape a challenging strategy and compelling creative campaign in the face of much scepticism. This forced people to sit up and pay attention to Paralympic athletes, tackled prejudices head on and delivered a compelling reason to watch the event.

Channel 4 worked with Paralympic gold-medallist Giles Long to develop LEXI, a new graphics-based system that helped viewers understand the classification system used to distinguish the different levels and forms of disability among Paralympic athletes, and created a ‘Meet the superhumans’ TV ad.

The broadcaster’s approach delivered a 251% increase in viewers over the previous Paralympic Games, with 11.6m watching the opening ceremony and almost 40m people – more than two-thirds of the UK population – watching the Paralympic Games at some point on TV.

Sainsbury’s had the highest association of any Paralympic sponsor, and the greatest growth in association during the event. What’s more, it has reported that the sponsorship activity resulted in a positive return on investment.