How On Running Turned Akwasi Frimpong's Story Into Black Ice
On Running's Black Ice is a ten-minute short film released in January 2022, created in partnership with production company Hungry Man, that chronicles the life of Akwasi Frimpong — Africa's first Black male Olympic skeleton athlete and Ghana's second Winter Olympian — through a hybrid format combining graphic-novel animation with live-action documentary filmmaking, published in Switzerland as part of the brand's broader Dream On athlete platform.
The campaign centres on a story that is as much about survival as it is about sport. Frimpong was born in Ghana, raised in the Netherlands, and ultimately became the first Black male skeleton athlete to compete at the Olympic Games, achieving the feat at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. His attempt to qualify for the 2022 Beijing Winter Games was derailed by a COVID-19 diagnosis, a turn of events that the campaign addresses directly rather than elides. In doing so, On Running positions resilience and the refusal to abandon a dream as the animating values of both the athlete and the brand itself.
Published in Switzerland in February 2022, Black Ice operates as an integrated campaign containing two primary media assets: the film itself and a companion comic book. The campaign's geographic roots in Switzerland are significant — On Running is a Swiss performance sports brand, and the decision to anchor a story about an African-born, European-raised skeleton racer within that identity reflects the brand's ambition to speak to a global athletic community from a distinctly European creative base. The campaign was written and directed by Richard Bullock for Hungry Man and earned a D&AD Wood Pencil, according to dandad.org, cementing its standing as one of the more formally ambitious sports films to emerge from the 2022 advertising cycle.
On Running operates in one of the most concentrated competitive landscapes in global consumer goods. Nike held an estimated 35.2% share of the global athletic-footwear market in 2022, according to Statista, while adidas held approximately 15.5%, according to the adidas Group annual report — meaning the two largest competitors commanded roughly half the market between them. On Running held an estimated 1.3% global athletic-footwear share in 2022, ranking fifth behind Nike, adidas, Skechers, and Puma, according to Statista. In Switzerland, On Running's domestic market, that underdog positioning carries a specific creative logic: a challenger brand from a small Alpine nation telling the story of an athlete who refused to accept the limits others placed on him.
Black Ice sits within On Running's Dream On platform, a campaign architecture built around athlete-centred storytelling rather than product specification or performance data. Where Nike's 50th-anniversary campaign in 2022 deployed filmmaker Spike Lee across a sweeping panorama of American sports history, as reported by Creative Review, On Running chose depth over breadth — one athlete, one decade-long journey, ten minutes of screen time. That strategic contrast is not incidental. It reflects On Running's effort to build emotional equity in a market where its share of voice cannot match its larger rivals through volume alone.
The choice of Akwasi Frimpong as the campaign's subject deepens that strategic rationale. Skeleton racing is a niche winter sport with minimal mainstream commercial sponsorship, meaning On Running faced no competitive noise around the specific athlete or discipline it chose to platform. By associating itself with a genuinely historic sporting achievement — Africa's first Black male Olympic skeleton competitor — the brand claimed a piece of sports cultural history that no competitor had staked. The companion comic book and the distribution of the film and book to more than 600 young people in South Africa and Ghana through Frimpong's foundation, as documented by Fortherightreasons Co, extended the campaign's reach into communities where On Running had limited prior brand presence.
Richard Bullock directed Black Ice for Hungry Man. Bullock's established approach to sports brand filmmaking has been to resist portraying athletes as superheroes, favouring instead a grounded, human-scale perspective on competitive life, as documented by thestable.com.au and campaignbriefasia.com. Black Ice represents a deliberate and formally motivated departure from that instinct. Bullock concluded that Frimpong's specific story — a man who fled poverty, overcame injury, navigated institutional indifference from multiple national athletic bodies, and reached an Olympic podium — lent itself directly to the superhero framework precisely because the resilience it demanded was genuinely extraordinary. The decision to lean into the graphic novel format was therefore not a stylistic affectation but a narrative argument: Frimpong's life warranted the visual grammar of myth.
Rather than writing a conventional script or assembling a traditional storyboard, Bullock wrote the initial treatment as a graphic novel, according to records documented by fortherightreasons.co and Heckler. Illustrator Dean Mortensen then brought that graphic novel to life, producing the visual architecture that gives the film its distinctive texture. The finished work blends Mortensen's animation with live-action documentary sequences, creating a format that Creative Review, in coverage published on January 24, 2022, praised for its combination of animation and live action and its framing of Frimpong as a figure whose superpower is resilience rather than athletic dominance.
Production of the campaign spanned seven locations including Cape Town and others across multiple continents, according to heckler.tv and campaignbriefasia.com, reflecting the geographic complexity of Frimpong's own biography. That logistical scope, coordinated by Hungry Man, is embedded in the film's visual range — the viewer moves between Ghanaian landscapes, European training facilities, and the compressed, terrifying geometry of the skeleton track itself. The companion comic book, produced alongside the film, functions as a standalone object distributed directly to young people in South Africa and Ghana through Frimpong's foundation, as documented by fortherightreasons.co, giving the creative work a physical afterlife beyond broadcast and digital channels.
Black Ice received a D&AD Wood Pencil, according to dandad.org, placing it among the recognised works in the D&AD awards programme for the relevant cycle. For a ten-minute sports documentary from a brand holding an estimated 1.3% global athletic-footwear market share, according to Statista, that recognition is a meaningful indicator of the campaign's standing within the creative industry.
No verified audience viewership or commercial performance data for Black Ice is publicly available beyond the YouTube metadata associated with the trailer asset, which records 1,079 views and one like as catalogued in available platform records. Those figures reflect the trailer rather than the full film and do not represent the campaign's total reach across On Running's owned channels and media partners. What is documented is the campaign's editorial footprint: Black Ice generated 29 pieces of international creative and sports-media coverage across outlets including the BBC, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, Creative Review, Adweek, Campaign Brief, B&T, and Ad Age, according to records attributed to hungryman.com and fortherightreasons.co. That volume of earned media coverage for a campaign from a challenger sports brand is structurally significant — it indicates that the hybrid graphic-novel format and the historic nature of Frimpong's story together generated journalistic interest that paid media spending alone could not have manufactured.
The distribution of the film and comic book to more than 600 young people in South Africa and Ghana through Akwasi Frimpong's foundation, as documented by fortherightreasons.co, represents a form of impact that sits outside conventional campaign metrics but directly serves On Running's stated brand values. Clapboard Score: 63/100.
Black Ice is a ten-minute short film by On Running, created by Hungry Man and directed by Richard Bullock, released in January 2022 in Switzerland. It tells the story of Akwasi Frimpong, Africa's first Black male Olympic skeleton athlete, using a hybrid format that combines graphic-novel animation with live-action documentary footage to explore themes of resilience and determination.
Richard Bullock directed Black Ice for production company Hungry Man. Bullock wrote the campaign's treatment as a graphic novel rather than a conventional script, and illustrator Dean Mortensen animated that material. The film was released as part of On Running's Dream On athlete storytelling platform in Switzerland in February 2022, according to available campaign records.
Akwasi Frimpong is Africa's first Black male Olympic skeleton athlete and Ghana's second Winter Olympian, having competed at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. On Running chose Frimpong because his story of perseverance against institutional barriers aligns directly with the brand's Dream On platform, and his historic status gave the campaign a culturally significant subject no competitor had claimed.
Black Ice received a D&AD Wood Pencil, according to dandad.org, recognising the ten-minute On Running documentary produced by Hungry Man. The campaign also generated 29 pieces of international coverage across outlets including the BBC, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and Creative Review, according to records documented by hungryman.com and fortherightreasons.co.
The companion comic book, illustrated by Dean Mortensen, functioned as a physical extension of the Black Ice film. The book and film were distributed to more than 600 young people in South Africa and Ghana through Akwasi Frimpong's foundation, according to fortherightreasons.co, giving the campaign a direct community-engagement dimension beyond its broadcast and digital presence.
On Running held an estimated 1.3% global athletic-footwear share in 2022, according to Statista, competing against Nike at 35.2% and adidas at 15.5%. Black Ice counters that scale disadvantage through depth rather than volume — one athlete's decade-long story told over ten minutes — staking cultural territory in Olympic skeleton that neither larger competitor had occupied.
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