Channel 4 launched its biggest ever marketing campaign in July 2012 to promote its coverage of the London Paralympic Games. The campaign aimed to change perceptions of the Paralympics and position the event as one of the largest broadcasts of the year. Channel 4 sought to treat Paralympians as elite athletes rather than disabled people and highlight their abilities over their disabilities. The campaign was a success, receiving several awards, attracting over 11 million UK viewers, and helping change public opinion of disability and the Paralympics.

1. Channel 4s ‘Meet the Superhumans’
----Presentation by Sharmila Maitra
(Management trainee)SIMC B

2. About the Campaign
• Channel 4 won the rights to the London 2012 Paralympic Games in
2010.
• It was Channel 4s biggest ever marketing campaign July 17th 2012 to
promote coverage of the London Paralympic Games
• It was ‘roadblock' premiere at 9.00 PM across 78 television channels
including all the network channels as well

3. Their Insights
• Channel 4 wished to change the way the world perceived the
Paralympics and disability in general
• The channel wanted the media to balance the human side of the
coverage with treating the Paralympians as athletes first and
foremost.

4. Their Hurdles
• 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

5. Their Goals
• Positioning the London 2012 Paralympic Games as one of the largest
broadcast events of the year as well as in Channel 4's history
• They did not want Paralympics as a poorer cousin of Olympics but
as the event of 2012
• Reinforce Channel4's long-standing identity as an innovator
prepared to challenge perceptions, break new boundaries and
provide a voice for the minority audience

6. Their Game Plan
• 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

7. Their Game Plan Contd..
• 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 the IPC'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

8. Simple but tactical press campaign called "thanks for the warm-up"

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

10. Results
• 4Creative won multiple awards including the Grand Prix at Lions, a
Black Pencil and four Yellow Pencils at the D&AD Awards, it was
awarded the ‘commercial of the year’ at British Arrow
• This event was broadcasted in over 100 countries with 11.6m
viewers
• Over 2.7 million spectators attended the event
• Over $70 million was raised in ticket sales

11. The 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

12. Thankyou.