
Team GB athletes have been pranked.
With the Rio 2016 Olympic Games opening ceremony just hours away British athletics , Nissan Motor (GB) Ltd, Official Automotive Partner of the British Olympic Association (BOA) and British Paralympic Association (BPA), have been having some fun with some of the nation’s biggest medal hopefuls.
The ‘#DoItForUs’ campaign, which will launch with a 90” TV commercial (TVC) roadblock across ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky this evening, reveals how Team GB and ParalympicsGB athletes, including Katarina Johnson-Thompson (Heptathlon) and Richard Whitehead MBE (Athletics), fared when pranked by two Nissan Global Sponsorship ‘executives’, keen to get more return on their sponsorship investment.
The two executives played by actors and filmed on hidden cameras, approached athletes with their suggestions on how they could feature the Nissan brand more prominently during their event at the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Not content with just sponsoring the British teams, the executives shared their own recommendations on how they could sponsor every element of their performance.
Amongst many of Nissan’s recommendations are that Max Whitlock (gymnastics) holds his breath to communicate the Nissan LEAF’s Zero Emissions, and Richard Whitehead MBE (athletics) makes a Nissan LEAF start-up sound before his event.
Rather like Mo Farah’s famous ‘Mobot’, other British athletes were also asked if they would adopt the ‘N for Nissan’ sign or consider opening out their arms to ‘steer’ around the bend during their events. The film captures the reactions of many famous faces to see how open they would be to supporting Nissan’s sponsorship.
The campaign film was shot during Team GB’s Kitting Out at the Birmingham NEC and ParalympicsGB’s Team Launch in London, ahead of the team’s departure to Rio.