Canadian Paralympic Team Bets on Athlete Stories to Drive Inclusion
The Canadian Paralympic Team's 'Greatness Moves Us' campaign is a bilingual, multi-channel brand platform launched on July 9, 2024, exactly 50 days before the Paris Paralympic Games, tracing seven Canadian Para athletes from their earliest dreams to the world stage in order to unite Canadians around a shared pursuit of excellence and inclusion.
Created by Vancouver-based agency WILL for the Canadian Paralympic Committee, the campaign spans television, out-of-home, digital, and social media across Canada. At its centre is a 60-second film that weaves archival Canadian Para-sport footage together with new material featuring Amy Burk (goalball), Eric Rodrigues (wheelchair rugby), Noah Vucsics (Para athletics), Priscilla Gagne (Para judo), Sheriauna Haase (Para athletics), Tamara Steeves (wheelchair basketball), and Travis Murao (wheelchair rugby), as reported by Paralympic Ca. The campaign also surfaces historic moments through appearances from athletes including Marissa Papaconstantinou, Aurelie Rivard, Nate Reich, and Brent Lakatos.
The platform extends beyond a single film. A custom musical track, produced in both English and French by Toronto-based bilingual artist Aiza — described by her label as the Afro-bop Queen and voted one of Canada's breakthrough artists for 2023 — underpins the campaign's accessibility ambitions. As noted by Mediacentre Cbc Ca, the audio was deliberately engineered with breathing space so that descriptive video narration can sit cleanly alongside the lyrics, ensuring listeners who depend on audio description receive an equally immersive experience. The campaign's distribution agreement with CBC/Radio-Canada, Canada's official broadcaster for the Paris 2024 and Milano-Cortina 2026 Paralympic Games, gives it national reach in both official languages. Karen O'Neill, CEO of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, stated that the work 'beautifully encapsulates our commitment to building the best-prepared teams and fostering the power of inclusion.' Clapboard Score: 71/100.
The Canadian Paralympic Committee identified a clear strategic gap in Canadian sports culture ahead of Paris 2024. Paralympic sport in Canada has historically received substantially less broadcast visibility and brand investment than its Olympic counterpart, creating an opportunity for the CPC to claim a distinctive emotional space rather than compete on spectacle alone. The 'Greatness Moves Us' campaign by WILL responds to this by repositioning Paralympic athletes not as inspirational outliers but as the fullest expression of what sport can demand of a person.
The broader commercial context supports this ambition. According to GlobalData, the global sports-sponsorship market is a growing sector with significant projected expansion through the early 2030s. The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games drew a sponsorship portfolio of 91 brands, according to paralympic.ca, illustrating that commercial interest in Paralympic sport has moved well beyond niche territory. Within Canada, no publicly audited figure exists for isolated Canadian Paralympic Team sponsorship revenue, but the CPC's multi-channel distribution through CBC/Radio-Canada reflects a platform-level investment in audience development rather than a single broadcast placement.
The strategic framing of 'Greatness Moves Us' positions the Canadian Paralympic Team in clear contrast to competitors for national sports attention, including the Canadian Olympic Committee, whose pre-Games campaigns typically centre on medal projections and athlete celebrity. By anchoring the narrative in the journey — from first dreams through to the Paris 2024 stage — WILL and the CPC prioritise emotional continuity over event-specific hype. The bilingual English and French execution further signals that inclusivity in Canada means linguistic and cultural breadth, not just physical diversity, a distinction that Canadian broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada, as the campaign's primary media partner, is structurally well-placed to amplify across the country, as confirmed by mediacentre.Cbc Ca.
'Greatness Moves Us' was directed by Ross Allen, according to research documented by Adworld Ie, with production handled by GOOD–IDEA®. The film's central creative decision is the integration of archival Canadian Para-sport footage alongside newly shot material, giving the campaign a temporal depth that a single-shoot production could not achieve. Moments from the careers of historical figures in Canadian Paralympic sport anchor the storytelling in lived history, while the seven featured athletes bring immediacy and personal specificity to the 60-second narrative.
The editing structure is built around emotional escalation — beginning in the quiet, private spaces where athletes first encounter their sport and building toward the scale of international competition at Paris 2024. As reported by Strategyonline Ca in a review by journalist Jennifer Horn published on July 19, 2024, this dual framing of athletes in both competition and personal settings was a deliberate choice to show the full human arc rather than simply the moment of triumph. Horn noted that viewer feedback following the campaign's launch included requests for more information about the featured athletes, an organic response that suggests the storytelling provoked genuine curiosity rather than passive consumption.
The most technically distinctive element of the campaign is the soundtrack. Toronto-based bilingual artist Aiza, described as the Afro-bop Queen and voted one of Canada's breakthrough artists for 2023, produced a custom track delivered in both English and French. The audio engineering deliberately incorporates silence and breathing space between lyrical phrases. As documented by paralympic.ca, this approach ensures that audio description tracks for viewers and listeners with visual impairments do not compete with the song's lyrics, allowing Paralympic sport's commitment to accessibility to be present not just in its subject matter but in the production methodology itself. The campaign reaches across Canada through its CBC/Radio-Canada broadcast partnership, extending the bilingual score's reach to audiences in both official languages.
No publicly audited viewership or reach figures for the 'Greatness Moves Us' campaign are available in verified sources as of this writing. However, the qualitative signals documented around the campaign point to meaningful audience engagement with the creative platform. According to strategyonline.ca, journalist Jennifer Horn reported that the Canadian Paralympic Committee received viewer feedback specifically requesting more information about the athletes featured in the 60-second film — a behavioural indicator that the storytelling generated active interest rather than passive awareness.
The structural effectiveness of the campaign rests on several reinforcing decisions. Launching 50 days before the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, as confirmed by paralympic.ca, gave the platform sufficient runway to build audience familiarity with the seven featured athletes before competition began, rather than arriving at the moment of peak distraction. The bilingual English and French delivery, paired with Aiza's accessibility-engineered soundtrack, extended the campaign's addressable audience across Canada in a way that most sports advertising in the country does not attempt. The CBC/Radio-Canada broadcast partnership, which covers both Paris 2024 and the upcoming Milano-Cortina 2026 Paralympic Games according to mediacentre.cbc.ca, positions 'Greatness Moves Us' not as a one-cycle execution but as the opening chapter of a sustained brand platform. The campaign's continuation into 2025 with 'Where It Begins' — a follow-up that shifts emphasis to the origins of athletes' Paralympic journeys, as documented by paralympic.ca — confirms that the CPC and WILL regard the platform as an ongoing creative and commercial investment rather than a single pre-Games burst.
'Greatness Moves Us' is a bilingual Canadian Paralympic Team campaign created by agency WILL and launched on July 9, 2024. It traces seven Canadian Para athletes from their earliest sporting dreams to the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games stage, using archival footage, new film, and a custom bilingual score by Toronto artist Aiza, distributed nationally through CBC/Radio-Canada.
Vancouver-based agency WILL created 'Greatness Moves Us' for the Canadian Paralympic Committee. The campaign was directed by Ross Allen, with production by GOOD–IDEA®. It launched across television, out-of-home, digital, and social media in Canada, 50 days before the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games opened on August 28, 2024, according to paralympic.ca.
Seven Canadian Para athletes appear in 'Greatness Moves Us': Amy Burk in goalball, Eric Rodrigues and Travis Murao in wheelchair rugby, Noah Vucsics and Sheriauna Haase in Para athletics, Priscilla Gagne in Para judo, and Tamara Steeves in wheelchair basketball. The campaign also features archival footage of historic Canadian Paralympic figures including Brent Lakatos and Aurelie Rivard, per paralympic.ca.
The soundtrack by Toronto bilingual artist Aiza was engineered with deliberate pauses between lyrical phrases so that audio description tracks for visually impaired audiences do not compete with the song, as documented by paralympic.ca. This makes the campaign's accessibility commitment structural, embedding inclusion into the production methodology rather than limiting it to the athletes represented on screen.
CBC/Radio-Canada, the campaign's broadcast partner, holds the official Canadian broadcasting rights for both the Paris 2024 and Milano-Cortina 2026 Paralympic Games, according to mediacentre.cbc.ca. This gives the 'Greatness Moves Us' platform a multi-cycle distribution foundation, and the CPC has already extended the creative direction into 2025 with a follow-up campaign called 'Where It Begins', per paralympic.ca.
Following the campaign's launch, the Canadian Paralympic Committee received viewer feedback requesting more information about the seven featured athletes, according to strategyonline.ca journalist Jennifer Horn writing on July 19, 2024. This indicates the storytelling provoked active curiosity. No publicly audited viewership figures are available, but the qualitative response confirmed genuine audience engagement with the Paralympic sport narrative across Canada.
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