Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee Unite for We Are All Team Canada
We Are All Team Canada is a 2025 film campaign created by independent agency Hive for the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee, positioning Olympic and Paralympic sport as a force for national unity in Canada less than one year before the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, according to Olympic Ca.
The campaign marks a significant institutional milestone. As reported by LBBOnline, We Are All Team Canada is the first joint brand initiative the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Canadian Paralympic Committee (CPC) have ever produced together, making it a structurally novel entry in the history of Canadian sports marketing. Published in Canada in April 2025 and officially announced on April 16 of that year, the campaign centres on a single film asset designed to speak to the breadth of Canadian sporting identity — Olympic and Paralympic athletes presented not as separate communities but as a unified national team, according to Paralympic Ca.
The campaign's first media execution appeared days before the formal April 16 announcement, as a 30-second broadcast spot aired during the Canada–United States game at the IIHF Women's World Championship, according to reporting by LBBOnline. That placement was deliberate: a high-profile women's hockey rivalry between Canada and the United States provided immediate emotional resonance and mass reach. David Shoemaker, CEO and Secretary General of the Canadian Olympic Committee, stated on April 17, 2025, that the campaign launched less than one year before Milano Cortina 2026 and framed the timing as purposeful, noting that "sport has the potential to unite us in ways that little else can." Karen O'Neill, CEO of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, added that Canada's Paralympians and Olympians "represent the best of Canadian values as they proudly represent their country on the global stage, and We Are All Team Canada showcases how sport unites us all." A planned rollout of additional social media assets and athlete-generated content was announced for the coming weeks following launch. Clapboard rates this campaign 63 out of 100.
The Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee selected national unity as the strategic core of We Are All Team Canada at a moment of heightened cultural relevance in Canada, according to Oly Olympic Ca. LBBOnline characterised the campaign's timing as a deliberate response to a period of "global uncertainty," framing Canadian sporting achievement as a stabilising symbol of shared identity, according to Sportsnet Ca. That strategic choice reflects a broader understanding of how sport functions in the Canadian public imagination — not merely as entertainment but as a civic touchstone.
The Canadian sponsorship market provides important context for this campaign's ambitions. Canadian sponsorship spending reached an estimated C$4.68 billion in 2025, covering 114 brands, 50 properties, and 24 agencies, according to research cited in industry tracking data. Canadian brands committed approximately 17% more to rights fees in 2025 than in 2024, per the same source, signalling that sport is commanding a growing share of marketing investment across Canada. Within that environment, a joint campaign from the COC and CPC represents an attempt to consolidate two of Canada's most recognised sports organisations into a single, coherent brand voice capable of competing for audience attention and sponsor alignment against well-resourced rivals.
The competitive context matters. Rival national sports marketing efforts — including those from Rugby Canada and Canada Basketball — have each pursued distinct identity narratives in recent years, while provincial initiatives and professional league campaigns such as those from the Canadian Football League command substantial domestic media spend. By merging Olympic and Paralympic representation under one campaign, Hive created an asset with a broader potential audience than either committee could reach independently. The strategic integration of Paralympic athletes into a campaign narrative historically dominated by Olympic sport also signals a maturation in how Canadian institutions communicate sporting excellence, moving past tokenism toward genuine co-authorship of national sporting identity.
We Are All Team Canada delivers its message through a single film asset, a format that demands economy of emotion and precision of storytelling to carry the weight of two major national institutions simultaneously. The campaign was created by The Hive, an independent Canadian agency, as reported by LBBOnline, according to Strategyonline Ca. Production credits for the We Are All Team Canada campaign beyond agency attribution are not publicly documented at the time of this analysis.
The creative approach centres on narrative rather than spectacle. Rather than assembling a conventional highlight reel of athletic performance, the campaign positions sport as a shared cultural experience — something that happens to all Canadians, not just those competing. That framing is embedded in the campaign's title itself: We Are All Team Canada transfers ownership of national sporting identity from athletes to the broader public, an inclusive rhetorical move that has precedent in international Olympic marketing but is distinctly applied here to a dual Olympic-Paralympic context. The campaign's first media placement — a broadcast spot during the Canada–United States game at the IIHF Women's World Championship — reinforced this inclusive framing by debuting within a women's sporting event, aligning the message of collective identity with one of Canada's most emotionally charged sporting rivalries.
The lineage of Canadian Paralympic marketing provides a useful benchmark for assessing this creative direction. Earlier CPC campaigns including "Unstoppable" (2012, BBDO) and "Team" (February 2014, BBDO) and "The Games Are Tough, the Athletes Are Tougher" each operated as standalone Paralympic narratives, according to publicly available campaign records. We Are All Team Canada departs from that tradition by refusing to separate Olympic from Paralympic achievement, instead constructing a unified visual and verbal language. That structural choice is itself a creative statement — one that positions Hive's work as a reset of how Canada's two premier Olympic bodies speak to the public as a single entity.
No verified performance data for We Are All Team Canada is publicly available at the time of this analysis. The campaign launched in April 2025 with a planned phased rollout, and independent measurement of reach, engagement, or brand lift has not been published by the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Paralympic Committee, or agency Hive. What can be assessed is the campaign's structural design as a predictor of effectiveness.
The decision to debut during a live broadcast of the Canada–United States game at the IIHF Women's World Championship was strategically sound. High-stakes international hockey matches between Canada and the United States consistently generate significant domestic viewership in Canada, providing immediate mass exposure for the 30-second spot in an environment of peak emotional engagement. That placement also aligned the campaign's unity message with a real-time expression of national sporting identity — a contextual fit that paid media alone cannot replicate.
The campaign's dual-committee authorship represents its most structurally distinctive feature. By presenting a single creative platform endorsed by both the COC and the CPC, Hive eliminated the institutional siloing that has historically separated Olympic and Paralympic marketing in Canada. This consolidation strengthens sponsor value propositions by offering partners access to a unified national narrative rather than two parallel ones. The planned follow-on phases — social assets and athlete-generated content announced for coming weeks after launch, as reported by LBBOnline — suggest a campaign architecture built for sustained engagement rather than a single broadcast moment. Clapboard scores We Are All Team Canada at 63 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic intent and institutional ambition moderated by limited creative documentation and an absence of verified outcome data.
We Are All Team Canada is a 2025 film campaign created by Hive for the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee. It is the first joint brand campaign the two organisations have produced together, designed to position Olympic and Paralympic sport as a source of national unity in Canada ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games.
Independent Canadian agency The Hive created We Are All Team Canada on behalf of the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Canadian Paralympic Committee. The campaign was officially announced on April 16, 2025, in Toronto, with its first broadcast execution airing during the IIHF Women's World Championship Canada–United States game days before the formal launch.
The Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee launched We Are All Team Canada to present a unified national sporting identity. As both David Shoemaker of the COC and Karen O'Neill of the CPC stated at launch, the campaign reflects a belief that sport unites Canadians and that Olympic and Paralympic athletes together represent the best of Canadian values on the global stage.
The campaign launched in April 2025, less than one year before the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, as confirmed by COC CEO David Shoemaker. LBBOnline reported the timing was also shaped by a broader climate of global uncertainty, making the campaign's national unity message particularly resonant for Canadian audiences in the lead-up to a major international competition.
Clapboard rates We Are All Team Canada at 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong strategic rationale as the first joint COC-CPC brand initiative and its well-chosen broadcast debut placement, balanced against limited publicly available creative documentation and the absence of independently verified performance or audience outcome data.
Earlier Canadian Paralympic Committee campaigns including Unstoppable in 2012 and Team in 2014, both created by BBDO, operated as standalone Paralympic narratives. We Are All Team Canada marks a structural departure by combining Olympic and Paralympic representation under a single creative platform, refusing to separate the two communities and presenting them together as one national sporting identity.
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