Channel 4 won the rights to broadcast the 2012 London Paralympic Games in the UK. They launched an innovative campaign to increase awareness of and interest in the Paralympics. The campaign featured athletes telling their stories and rebranding Paralympians as "superhumans". It included a 90-second film aired simultaneously on 78 UK channels. The campaign was hugely successful, increasing awareness of the Paralympics from 16% to 77%. It helped Channel 4 exceed its audience targets and broke UK records for Paralympic TV viewership and attendance. The campaign won numerous awards for its creativity and impact.

1. Manpreet Singh
Mba3

2. • Channel 4 is a British television broadcaster since 2 November 1982. it is originally a subsidiary
of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated
by Channel Four Tv Corp. , a public body established in 1990, coming into operation in 1993.
With the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital on 31 March 2010,
Channel 4 became an entirely UK-wide TV channel for the first time
Channel 4 & Paralympic Games
• The Paralympic Games is an international multi-sport event, involving athletes with a range
of physical disabilities. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which since the 1988
Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, are held almost immediately following the Olympic
Games. All Paralympic Games are governed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
The Campaign Overview: Channel 4 won the rights to the London 2012 Paralympic Games in 2010. They
were faced with a media unfamiliar with Paralympic sport, nervous about covering disability and unsure of
their own ability to deliver a successful broadcast. Only a fraction of the public could name a Paralympian
and just 14% of the population said they were looking forward to the Games. Working with Pitch PR, They
ran an innovative, challenging campaign; transforming the landscape over 2 years and shifting editorial
coverage from the margins to the mainstream.

3. •Position the London 2012 Paralympic Games as one of the
largest broadcast events of 2012 and the biggest event in
Channel 4's history
•Engage the UK media early and move coverage for
Paralympic sport from the margins to the mainstream
•Prepare the ground for the biggest, loudest marketing campaign in the Channel's history
•Sustain momentum from the Olympics and direct public interest towards Channel 4's
Paralympic coverage
•Reinforce Channel4's long-standing identity as an innovator prepared to challenge perceptions,
break new boundaries and provide a voice for the minority audience
•Bring about a shift in public attitudes to disability
Audience: Their aim was to reach the UK public at large and drive an audience to Channel 4. To
achieve this, their primary targets were the editors, columnists and correspondents across UK
media whose confidence and support was essential if they were to deliver the publicity needed
as the 'other' broadcaster of London 2012.
Objectives

4. Situational Analysis
• Just 15% of the population were looking forward to the event and anticipated it to be ‘Interesting’.
•Most of the population did not have any knowledge about any Paralympians
• 50% felt that disabled people would not be able to achieve what able-bodied people could, and felt that
their disability would hold people back
• Channel 4 had launched the biggest marketing Campaign at the start of July 2012
• London Olympic games has just ended & was a great success
To make a ground of campaign, execution was started immediately after C4 won broadcasting Rights in
2010. For this Following steps were taken
• Engage specialist agency support to complement in-house team and help navigate opinionated, powerful
sporting media (Pitch PR)
• Develop regular dialogue with Paralympic editorial team at C4 to ensure promotional opportunities of
output maximised
• Summer 2010 press conference to launch £500k initiative to search for new disabled Paralympic presenters
• Roll out publicity for Paralympic Show, Inside Incredible Athletes and the BT Paralympic World Cup
• Press launch event hosted by comic Adam Hills (unveiled as presenter for round up show The Last Leg).Full
line up of new disabled talent and LEXI decoder system announced
• Roadshow to offices of key TV listing, consumer and feature media

5. Strategy & Execution
• Oscar Pistorius, a Paralympic athlete (now an Olympic athlete too) was the face of the
Campaign
• It First appeared when The Olympics was on in an order to give it equal standing
• Press launch event hosted by comic Adam Hills where the ‘LEXI decoder system’ introduced
• An online game was created that sought to find the next Paralympic event, bringing together
street sports such as skateboarding, BMX and street-luge with disability
• Huge coverage from the British Press
• Support form Paralympic.org website that live streamed nearly 600 hours of footage during
the Games and also uploaded an additional 1,000 hours of taped on-demand coverage to
theIPC's YouTube, Facebook and Twitter
• A series of 28 short films that told the stories of some of the individual participants were
uploaded on various portals

6. Strategy & Execution(cont)
Channel 4 launched its biggest ever marketing campaign on July 17 to promote coverage
of the London 2012 Paralympic Games with a ‘roadblock' premiere of its Meet the Superhumans film.
The 90 second long film, Meet the Superhumans, was broadcasted concurrently across 78 different UK tv
channels, including all of C4's networks, ITV1, Five, Sky One, Eurosport and all of UKTV's channels. Set to the
track, Harder Than You Think by hip hop legends, Public Enemy, the film showcases the abilities of some of
the leading UK Paralympians, represents some of the unique stories behind the elite athletes, and shows the
herculean efforts that have gone into their preparation for the Games.
This TV campaign was the second phase in C4's marketing campaign for the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
In the build-up to the Games, the campaign also encompassed major outdoor poster, press and digital
activity as Channel 4 delivers on its commitment to bring a new audience to the Paralympic Games and to
raise awareness of Paralympic sport.
The campaign was commissioned by Channel 4 marketing, and conceived and
directed by Tom Tagholm, for Channel 4's in-house agency, 4creative.

7. Use of some very strong visual images for the campaign.

8. • This campaign gave Superbowl ads a run for their money, going viral with more than 500,000
views on YouTube alone.
• Unprompted awareness of the Paralympics moved from 16% in July to 77% on the eve of the
Games
• 'Superhumans' terminology adopted prominently in headlines and editorial
• Coverage peaked with 11.6m viewers for opening ceremony coverage and each day broke new
records for live Paralympic sport coverage.
• Output reached 39.9m (69% of the population), which not only exceeded our 35m target but
was a 251% increase on the 2008 Beijing Paralympics.
• Over 2.7 million spectators attended the event
• Over $70 million was raised in ticket sales
• (Twitter) Grew @C4Paralympics from 3k followers in Jan 2012 to 120k during Games
• ‘Meet the Superhumans’ was widely-praised for its creativity and impact winning many
national and international awards including a Black Pencii, four Yellow Pencils and a Nomination
at D&AD Awards 2013.
Results

9. A bit after the Campaign
• The Paralympic Games made 251 world records as compared to 25 world records at
the Olympics.
• A follow-up campaign 'Return of the Superhumans‘ was developed in the year
2013 for Sainsbury's three-day Anniversary Games