I Am Sport

The I Am Sport strategy is the perfect example of how an amazing piece of creative can become the backbone for an entire marketing strategy, and it happened during a time of crisis.  It’s only because of our proximity to our client, the trust they place in us and our passion for our craft that provided us with the ability to achieve this.

I Am Sport essentially started life as the concept for a promo, it’s as simple as that.  Covid-19 was sweeping across the world and live sport had been completely paused. This was going to cause significant problems for our client Sky Sports and we wanted to do everything we could to help.  The original I Am Sport spot saw Sky Sports become the voice of sport, in a humble yet emotionally powerful way and set the scene for its proper come back.

Produced under the challenging circumstances that the world was, and continues to face, the spot cleverly blended a mix of internally produced content and externally sourced content from the social media profiles of sports stars and fans alike.  The voice over was recorded at home under a duvet to help with acoustics and then finished in a sound studio.  The spot was so well received that conversations started between Sky Creative Agency and Sky Sports happening about we could turn I Am Sport the spot, into a creative vehicle for Sky Sports during and extremely challenging time for a channel that relies on the existence of live sport.  #IAmSport was born.

At the start of June 2020 the sports industries started looking at ways in which they could collectively get live sport back up and running in a safe way.  This likely meant behind-closed-doors but it did offer the chance for Sky Sports to start broadcasting live sport to the many millions of sport fans that subscribe to the channel.  This gave us the perfect opportunity to follow-up the critically acclaimed first instalment of the #IAmSport franchise.

The Comeback was designed to be a defiantly rousing message from Sport to its fans ahead of the return of live competition. Nothing epitomises the spirit of sport like a comeback.  Whether it’s a personal return from injury, retirement or adversity, or a team that’s behind in a game reversing its fortunes, many of sports most iconic moments have been comebacks.  Only this time it’s different. Sport itself is coming back and the celebration of its comeback was going to feel like nothing else.  The Comeback spot depicted some of the greatest sporting comebacks of all time and was a celebration of the fact that sport was finally coming back into our lives.

Two more instalments of the franchise followed over the subsequent months and #IAmSport went on to become benchmark of what is achievable, despite the extraordinary circumstances everyone was living in.

The creative vehicle was so successful that Sky Spirts asked us to adapt the format to suit the return of live Formula 1 to its programming.  As with football, F1 was to be staged, initially, behind closed doors and it was vital that the essence of the #IAmSport sentiment was translated to the sport.  Needless to say, it went on to be a huge success with Sky Sports subscribers and Formula 1 fans.