With the Opening Ceremony on the horizon, rebranding not only affected the core agency teams, it echoed globally. We all had to react quickly across an international network to redesign the campaign elements. Activations were restructured to echo the rebrand from the global stage to the local bus stop.

Through collaboration, global teams crafted an “everywhere” framework within the core digital creative and media strategy, and passed the baton to five key local markets where they adopted, localized and inspired.

•From a skier lunging out of an unsuspecting banner ad and landing back into an entirely reconfigured homepage;

•To an interactive, first-person, 360-degree athlete video experience within a YouTube masthead;

•And custom Vine videos directed, shot and produced in real-time and on the grounds in Sochi showcasing the motion of Visa athlete’s everywhere…

It all lived on an advertising first: a responsive Tumblr that adjusted to anyone, from any market.

Our inspirational campaign produced five times higher social engagement than the second-place sponsor. With an almost-perfect 96% positive sentiment of our brand, we increased sponsorship awareness, brand equity and – critically – credit card transactions.

A third-party study even showed that our custom executions moved fans to pursue their ambitions and aspire to reach their goals.

Was the last-hour rebrand worth it? By the time the fifth ring didn’t open, our re-launch drove Visa to gold, beating out all Olympic sponsors in the social sphere such as Coke, P&G and McDonald’s.