Engaging Team Canada fans coast to coast.

The client

The Canadian Olympic Committee leads the achievement of Team Canada’s podium success and advances Olympic values across Canada. They deliver the latest information on Team Canada rosters, sports and schedules—and share stories to inspire future generations of athletes and fans.

Joining the team

During the London 2012 Summer Olympics, olympic.ca was not the digital hub the Canadian Olympic Committee envisioned to provide up-to-date results and connect fans. The Committee began a search for a new partner to help them revamp their digital assets, and drive fan awareness. We submitted our vision of how the COC could transform and strengthen its online brand presence and we were selected as their new digital agency of record.

Going for gold

Heading into this partnership, we knew that the COC faced significant engagement challenges, the most pressing being high levels of interest during the weeks of the Olympic Games and dramatic drop-off in between. Looking to enhance their digital footprint and engage fans, corporate partners and sport communities on an owned platform year-round, we focused on direct and uninterrupted access to Team Canada athletes, unique to their organization. A competitive advantage we still focus on today.

We began with a complete rethink and redesign of their website, focused on evolution, connectivity, engagement and growth of Team Canada’s brand in an ever-changing digital landscape. Our mobile-first solution was to create a modular design system that would allow easy iteration and optimization of olympic.ca without major redesigns and redevelopment in the future.

This was a major undertaking due to the complete reassessment of how fans interact with the website—and the volume of content we had to migrate over. The build was completed in phases with the first iteration ready for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Analytics showed visits to the website increased by 5,000%—a success reported in the Globe & Mail. Website traffic and fan engagement has continued to increase over the years, now reaching more than 17 million page views during peak time.

Our next mandate in preparation for the Rio De Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games was to focus on consistent fan engagement. This culminated in the development of the Canadian Olympic Club presented by Bell, a next-generation fan club that brings Team Canada fans closer to the action via athlete-related contests and gamification elements (including quizzes, polls, leaderboards and virtual rewards).

Leading into the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games, we worked with the committee to introduce website personalization, giving fans the ability to select their favourite athletes, sports and games. This results in the COC receiving more detailed analytics around the specific information fans seek and in-turn allows them to provide more meaningful and relevant unique content. With more than 100,000 new members joining the club during the games, it was a win-win for everyone. We continue to evolve fan engagement to prepare Team Canada for the next Olympic games.

We’ve also developed specialized digital assets, including a location scouting web app with interactive maps, a media guide native app, e-commerce store, online annual reports, a live digital donor wall for the Canadian Olympic Foundation and a resource library called “MyClassroom” for the Canadian Olympic School Program that gives teachers the ability to download and save activities for their curriculum. All of these initiatives have continued our ongoing goal of delivering direct access to robust, accurate and official information about Canadian athletes, sports and events in a convenient, reliable and intuitive way.

A place to belong

Creating a website that enhances COC’s fan engagement, builds a virtual home for Olympic athletes, and allows flexible integration all digital assets has been a tremendous success and surpassed the initial vision. The Canadian Olympic Committee has been able to position itself as the home for Canadian Olympic fans, furthering the commitment to develop and support a strong Team Canada and inspire the next generation of athletes.