With the Paris 2024 Olympics in action, Mediaweek is catching up with the standout brand partners powering the Summer Games to hear first-hand from their marketing guns about running campaigns on the world’s biggest sporting stage. Today, we’re with Shez Ford, chief general manager, consumer of Australian Olympic and Paralympic Team partner, Allianz.
What does being an Olympic partner mean for Allianz?
We believe that good partnerships bring people together, creating a sense of community and connection. Our local and global Olympic and Paralympic partnership does just that.
For Allianz, sport has always been in our brand‘s DNA, and this partnership connects to our purpose with the Olympic and Paralympic visions of building a better and more inclusive world through sport. The 2024 Games are expected to attract 15 million visitors, with billions expected to watch the Opening Ceremony and the competitions live around the globe. There are very few other events which bring so many people from different nationalities, religions and cultures together in the same way. We are excited to be a part of this incredible display of global unity demonstrating respect, fairness, inclusion, and tolerance.
In Australia, we’ve been a proud partner of Paralympics Australia since 2011, and the Australian Olympic Committee since 2019. Globally, Allianz joined the Worldwide Olympic and Paralympic Programme as the Worldwide Insurance Partner from 2021 – 2028. The partnership reflects an opportunity for Allianz Australia to join a local and global community of athletes and people who share our passion for sport, and the social, physical, and mental benefits it can bring to humanity.
Walk us through your campaign for the Olympics. What are the key elements and what inspired the creative direction?
There are a number of different components to our Olympic and Paralympic Campaign, but each component has one thing in common, celebrating the communities that will be cheering on our athletes at Paris 2024. Go Australiaahhh, our fully integrated TTL campaign, turns the focus back to Australians, capturing the places we gather to cheer our country on – from the farm, to the work break room, to the local pub, and of course around the modern campfire of the family living room.
What makes this ad different to other Olympic and Paralympic ads is the integration of the Allianz ‘Ahhh’. ‘Ahhhhhlianz’ is one of Australia’s most iconic and memorable brand codes and ‘Ahhh’ is the sound Aussies make when excitedly cheering the country on.
‘Ahhh’ is the sound we made when Cathy Freeman sprinted into history, it’s the sound that we made watching the Courtney Vine score ‘that goal’, and it’s how we will celebrate every time an Aussie achieves the remarkable in Paris. Our Go Australiaahhh creative uses this simple but powerful truth to create a uniting cheer, celebrating those shared moments of everday Australians cheering on their nation.
But we know that it’s not all about what people watch on their tv screens or see in OOH, it’s the way a brand makes them feel, and this is why we have bought our campaign to life for the community in our ‘Future Team Australia’. This part of the campaign was an epic act to bring the cheer to life and an opportunity for people to touch and feel the brand. This paid and earned extension was created to inspire children to continue to play sports by coming to the Allianz Stadium and being treated like world class athletes for the day, all whilst listening to the incredible Go Australiaahhh cheer that was created to sound like it was the voices of 45,000 Australians.
What objectives did you set out to achieve with the campaign?
We knew going into the development of this campaign that the Olympic and Paralympic period would be extremely cluttered, with brands, both Olympic and non-Olympic partners, fighting for share of voice. We knew we needed to create a campaign that would drive distinction, ensuring Allianz is the brand Australians remember most these Olympic and Paralympic Games.
To drive brand distinctiveness, we set out to develop a campaign that captures the very essence of the Games – not just our amazing athletes, but the way in which the Games unite the nation. Go Australiaahhh is a celebration of the Australian spirit and the way in which we feel when celebrating our nation. That infectious and unbridled excitement that comes from sport. We wanted Australians to feel as if Allianz is cheering right alongside the rest of the nation.
What is the weighting of your media mix, and what has driven this decision?
Our paid media campaign launched in early May with a 10-week lead into the Opening Ceremony. Our aim was to cut through the competitive clutter and be one of the first sponsors out to market. We launched with a multi-channel approach including TV, BVOD, cinema, social, digital, outdoor, and radio. Our aim was to strengthen Allianz’s association with the Games, proudly promoting that we are the Worldwide Insurance Partner through association with key sport and cultural moments.
As momentum built in the lead up to the Games, so too did our presence in market, leveraging additional channels and formats to add gravitas and impact to ensure that Allianz is unmissable.
OOH formed a huge part of our media strategy, with three separate buckets of activity: Our Go Austraaliaahhh creative running across high impact, large format placements nationwide. Reactive content celebrating key milestones and moments in the lead up and during the games, from ambassador qualification to gold medal moments. And finally, a media package with QMS, giving us category exclusivity across a nationwide out of home network in the lead up and during the games.
As part of this package, our logo features alongside content from Paralympics Australia and the Australia Olympic Committee, celebrating content key milestones including team announcements, countdown celebrations, medal tallies, and real time results.
And just when you thought our campaign couldn’t get any bigger, Allianz is now live on the Glebe silos – this is currently the biggest billboard in the southern hemisphere. Additionally, people in Sydney and Melbourne will be able to hop on an Allianz Go Australiaahhh branded light rail and tram.
How important is FTA TV coverage to the campaign?
With over 4 million customers nation-wide choosing to have an Allianz product, we know how diverse our customer base is and how important it is to show up in places that they are. We still have a large base that watches free to air, just like we have customers that are only interested in digital channels, so for us it’s about looking at our segmentation and understanding what the different behaviours are and making considered decisions to ensure each and every person is in this mix.
What aspect of this campaign and partnership are you most proud of?
There are so many things to be proud of and to be honest, with the Games still going, it just gets better and better and we get more and more proud of the work we are achieving.
One of the things that has not only had the biggest impact, but has been incredible to watch, is the work we did with Grassroots sporting teams at Allianz Stadium to bring our Paris 2024 campaign to life. Watching children arrive at the stadium to their names up in lights, experiencing motivating locker room speeches by Olympians and Paralympians and then running out onto the pitch to the roar of a crowd was something that had a significant impact on the team.
The other part to this is the work we are doing since the Games started celebrating our athletes in their special moments. Whether it is to remind Australia to set their alarms for a 3am Matilda’s match or celebrating Allianz Ambassador, Mollie O’Callaghan’s gold medal win, we are using our OOH and digital assets to bring these moments to life in real time. The team is working like a media newsroom to be reactive in every moment and it’s a new approach for Allianz and it’s working.
How do you plan to build upon or expand the campaign moving forward?
Sometimes, brands can forget how impactful campaigns can be when you manage to tap into an emotional truth. What we know from all the incredible feedback we have been receiving is that our Olympics campaign has resonated with Australians.
Whether you love sport or not, it has reminded us all of how important the Games are in coming together and supporting our athletes. We want to build on this feeling going forward and continue to evolve the brand and the work we do encompassing the things that Australians really care about. And now, with our Football Australia partnership that we announced a couple of weeks ago, we know we have the partnerships and assets to do just this. Watch this space.
See also:
CMOlympics: Tim Morrissey on News Corp’s advertisers, games hub, and unified Paris team
CMOlympics: Michelle Klein on the ‘ideal platform’ for historic NRMA Insurance partnership
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Top image: Shez Ford