Pan American Games Let's All Play Unites the Americas Through Sport
"Let's All Play" is a December 2018 film campaign created by Circus Grey Lima for the Pan American Games and Parapan American Games, positioning the Lima 2019 edition not merely as a sporting event but as a continent-wide celebration of the Americas' original cultures, built around the inclusive motto "Jugamos todos."
The campaign launched in Peru and addressed a dual mandate: generate public enthusiasm for the Pan American Games scheduled for July 26 to August 11, 2019, and for the Parapan American Games scheduled for August 23 to September 1, 2019, both held in Lima, according to Clapboard's editorial archive. Its strategic proposition moved beyond athletic competition to position sport as a shared language connecting the diverse indigenous and contemporary cultures of the Western Hemisphere. The phrase "Jugamos todos" — rendered not only in Spanish but also in Quechua and Aymara, two of Peru's most widely spoken indigenous languages — signalled that this campaign was consciously addressing communities across Peru and the broader Americas, as documented by adsoftheworld.com. That trilingual commitment was not decorative; it functioned as proof of an inclusion principle the campaign articulated throughout its single film asset. The client, the Pan American Sports Organization, now operating as Panam Sports and recognised as the governing body for both Games, commissioned Circus Grey to translate that institutional ambition into mass-market creative work, per panamsports.org. In the context of Peru's creative industry, the assignment carried particular weight: Lima 2019 represented the largest multi-sport event ever hosted on Peruvian soil, and the communications work needed to match that historical scale. Clapboard scores "Let's All Play" at 71 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that achieves cultural coherence and strategic clarity within the constraints of a single-film execution.
Circus Grey identified a strategic tension at the heart of the Lima 2019 brief. Large multi-sport events risk feeling remote to everyday citizens — spectacular in scale but disconnected from personal identity. The agency's response was to reframe the Pan American Games and Parapan American Games as an expression of something the audience already owned: the cultural inheritance of the Americas.
The decision to foreground indigenous identity reflected a reading of the Peruvian market that aligned with broader cultural movements across Latin America. According to Esan Edu Pe, cultural pride and national identity are among the most resonant emotional drivers for Peruvian consumers, particularly when those narratives are expressed through recognisable symbols of pre-Columbian heritage. The campaign's trilingual motto — Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara — operationalised that insight directly, as reported by adsoftheworld.com. In Peru, where Quechua is spoken by a substantial portion of the population concentrated in highland regions, and Aymara maintains cultural significance in the southern Andes, the linguistic choice widened the campaign's sense of address well beyond Lima's urban core. The inclusion angle extended to the Parapan American Games specifically, with the phrase "Jugamos todos" — everyone plays — functioning as an explicit statement about disability inclusion alongside cultural inclusion, per Clapboard's editorial record. This dual framing differentiated the campaign from conventional multi-sport event advertising, which typically defaults to athletic heroism and medal-count narratives. Competitors in the sports event promotion space, such as campaigns produced for the Pan American Games in Toronto 2015 or Buenos Aires 2018, leaned heavily on performance imagery; Circus Grey's approach for Lima 2019 instead led with belonging. The Pan American Sports Organization's own communications positioning, as outlined by panamsports.org, supported this direction, emphasising continental unity as an organisational value — giving the creative strategy institutional backing and thematic coherence.
"Let's All Play" was executed as a single film asset, produced under the creative direction of Ricardo Baracco and Mario Neumann at Circus Grey Lima, with chief creative officers Juan Carlos Gomez de la Torre and José Luis Rivera y Piérola overseeing the work, as documented by adsoftheworld.com.
The film's visual identity drew on the iconography of the Americas' original cultures, translating pre-Columbian motifs and symbols into a contemporary animated language. Animation production was handled by Zeppelin Studio and PlanB Studio, as credited by adsoftheworld.com, both of which contributed to a visual vocabulary that felt distinctly rooted in the Andean and broader Pan-American artistic tradition rather than in the generic graphic language common to international sports event communications. The art direction by Gabriel Capurro and Julio Ramirez shaped that visual world with specificity — the palette, the geometry of the forms, and the movement of the animation all reinforced the cultural premise established in the strategy. Copywriting by Christian Merino, Eduardo Trelles, and Esteban Merino gave the campaign its tonal register: warm, participatory, and declarative rather than reverential or hyperbolic. The trilingual rendering of the campaign's central line required copywriting decisions that extended beyond translation — each language version needed to carry the same emotional weight and the same quality of direct address, per Clapboard's editorial assessment. Production was managed by Renzo Talavera, with agency producers Vanessa Gómez and Mayte Angulo coordinating across the animation studios, according to adsoftheworld.com. The account was led by director Marcela Succar and supervised by Tania Rosales, with Wilfredo González managing the account day-to-day. The result was a film that operated as a cultural manifesto as much as a promotional piece — its creative ambition consistent with the scope of the Lima 2019 event it was built to serve.
No verified campaign-specific sales lift, market-share change, or brand-tracking movement for "Let's All Play" is publicly available. No awards for the campaign are documented at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, or the Webby Awards, per Clapboard's records. Analysis of the campaign's structural effectiveness, however, is supported by one significant event-level outcome.
According to Andina Pe, the Lima 2019 Games attributed to the "Jugamos todos" campaign recorded 717,448 attendees across ceremonies and competitions — a figure that positions the event as a substantial public mobilisation for a country hosting the Pan American Games for the first time at this scale. As reported by Mercadonegro Pe, Circus Grey Lima was identified as the lead agency responsible for the integrated communications effort supporting that attendance result. The campaign's structural strengths support this outcome. By anchoring the creative work in indigenous cultural identity rather than generic sporting aspiration, Circus Grey produced a message with unusually broad geographic reach within Peru — capable of resonating in highland and coastal communities alike. The trilingual execution reduced the distance between the campaign and audience segments that are frequently underserved by national advertising, according to Repositorio Bausate Edu Pe's analysis of Peruvian sports communications. In the Parapan American Games context specifically, the inclusive framing of "everyone plays" addressed a segment of the public that multi-sport event campaigns routinely neglect. These structural choices — cultural specificity, linguistic inclusion, disability representation — collectively produced a campaign whose reach extended beyond the conventional urban media consumer. The 71/100 Clapboard Score reflects that coherence of strategy and execution, tempered by the limitation of a single-asset output and the absence of documented award recognition.
"Let's All Play" was a December 2018 film campaign created by Circus Grey Lima for the Pan American Games and Parapan American Games. It used the trilingual motto "Jugamos todos" in Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara to position Lima 2019 as a celebration of the Americas' original cultures and an inclusive continental event.
Circus Grey Lima created the campaign. The agency operated under chief creative officers Juan Carlos Gomez de la Torre and José Luis Rivera y Piérola, with creative directors Ricardo Baracco and Mario Neumann leading the work, as documented by adsoftheworld.com. The campaign launched in Peru in December 2018.
The trilingual approach reflected an inclusion strategy. Quechua and Aymara are indigenous languages with significant speaker communities across Peru, particularly in highland and southern Andean regions. Using all three languages widened the campaign's reach beyond Lima's urban core and reinforced the motto's meaning: everyone, across all cultures, plays.
According to andina.pe, 717,448 attendees were recorded across ceremonies and competitions at the Lima 2019 Games. The attendance figure was attributed in part to the "Jugamos todos" communications campaign led by Circus Grey Lima, as reported by mercadonegro.pe.
No awards for "Let's All Play" are documented at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, or the Webby Awards, per Clapboard's records. The campaign receives a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100, recognising its cultural coherence and strategic clarity within a single-film execution.
The Pan American Games took place in Lima from July 26 to August 11, 2019. The Parapan American Games followed from August 23 to September 1, 2019, also in Lima. Both events were governed by the Pan American Sports Organization, now known as Panam Sports, per panamsports.org.
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