ARCHIVEHow WhatsApp Turned Encrypted Messages Into an Afghan Escape Story
How We Are Ayenda Turned a WhatsApp Escape Coordination Into a Cannes-Winning Documentary We Are...
Visa Champions Women in Sport for Milano Cortina 2026
Visa launched "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" on January 26, 2026 in the United States — an athlete-led storytelling platform featuring alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin and Paralympic multi-sport champion Oksana Masters, built around anthem films that foreground the human moments, perseverance, and community behind elite performance ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
The campaign extends Visa's long-running brand platform "Everywhere You Want to Be," reframing it around the path to achievement rather than the achievement itself. Where earlier iterations of the platform celebrated results — medals, podiums, and product utility — this iteration centres resilience, setbacks, and the support networks that sustain world-class careers. Andrea Fairchild, Senior Vice President of Global Sponsorship and Experiential Marketing at Visa, described the strategic intent at launch: "We centered Mikaela and Oksana at the heart of this campaign because their journeys demonstrate what it means to push boundaries," as reported by Corporate Visa.
Shiffrin and Masters represent two of the most decorated active athletes in their respective disciplines. Shiffrin holds 107 World Cup wins and 164 podiums, making her the most decorated alpine skier in history, according to corporate.visa.com. Masters has accumulated 19 Paralympic medals across three disciplines, according to corporate.visa.com, making her one of the most versatile Paralympic competitors in modern sport. Together, the two athletes have earned more than 125 major career wins and set over a dozen world records across their sports. The campaign distributes across broadcast, social, connected television, and online video in the United States, with media placements spanning Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, YouTube, and Hulu, as reported by Usa Visa. Anthem films ran from January through February 2026, with the campaign publicly listed on January 27, 2026, per usa.visa.com. The creative agency behind the work is Anomaly, as reported by reel360.com.
Visa built "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" on a consumer insight that runs deeper than Olympic sponsorship activation. The campaign recognises that audiences — particularly in the United States — connect more durably with athletic identity when they understand the texture of an athlete's journey rather than the binary outcome of a competition. By anchoring storytelling in setbacks, community, and long-term perseverance, Visa positions its brand as a presence across the full arc of an athlete's life, not merely at moments of visible triumph.
The strategic context matters. In the United States, women's sports viewership has grown consistently in recent years, with mainstream broadcast and streaming platforms investing in women's sporting events at a scale that would have been uncommon a decade ago. Visa's decision to distribute the campaign across Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, YouTube, and Hulu — as reported by usa.visa.com — reflects an understanding of where US audiences now consume sports content, and ensures that women athletes are visible on the same platforms as the broader sporting conversation.
The choice of Shiffrin and Masters is itself a competitive signal. Both athletes compete in disciplines — alpine skiing and Paralympic multi-sport — that sit outside the year-round commercial spotlight commanded by team sports. Visa's commitment to them across multiple Olympic cycles distinguishes its sponsorship approach from competitors such as Mastercard and American Express, both of whom invest in sports sponsorship but have not built equivalent long-form athlete storytelling platforms centred on women in winter and Paralympic sport. Visa reported approximately $7.03 trillion in purchase volume in 2025, more than twice Mastercard's approximately $2.96 trillion, according to businesstats.com — a market position that gives Visa the scale to sustain multi-cycle athlete relationships that smaller payment rivals cannot easily replicate.
The creative centrepiece of "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" is a pair of anthem films, one for each athlete, structured to surface the interior life of elite competition rather than its external markers. Each film moves through the human moments — early-morning training, injury, community, doubt, and recommitment — that precede and sustain performance at the Olympic and Paralympic level. The filmmaking approach is documentary in sensibility: intimate framing, naturalistic light, and an absence of the triumphalist grammar that typically governs sports advertising.
Shiffrin's film draws on her own account of what the campaign captures. "Being part of this campaign is meaningful because it reflects the reality behind every competition — the moments that shaped me long before I ever reached a podium," she said, as reported by corporate.visa.com. "Visa has been with me through so many chapters of my career, and this work captures that journey in such an authentic way." The statement is not incidental to the creative strategy — it is the strategy. The film earns its emotional weight by treating the athlete's interiority as the primary subject, with the Visa brand present as a consistent companion rather than a sponsor interruption.
Masters' film operates on a similar register but foregrounds community more explicitly, reflecting the particular character of her athletic identity. "My story is built on community, and Visa gets that," she said, as reported by corporate.visa.com. "This campaign shows the parts of an athlete's life we don't always talk about: the setbacks, the people who lift you up, and the belief that you're never on this path alone." The creative agency Anomaly shaped both films, as reported by reel360.com, though granular production credits — director, director of photography, editor — are not publicly documented at the time of writing. The campaign's media strategy amplifies the films across connected television environments where longer-format storytelling can hold attention in ways that conventional broadcast spots cannot.
No independently verified third-party performance data for "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" — including reach figures, brand-lift scores, or conversion metrics — is publicly available at the time of writing. The campaign launched on January 26, 2026, and ran through the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games period, a timeline that places formal post-campaign measurement beyond the current reporting window.
Structural analysis, however, supports a reasonable case for effectiveness. The campaign deploys two athletes with demonstrably large and loyal audiences in the United States — Shiffrin's 107 World Cup wins and 164 podiums, as cited by corporate.visa.com, generate consistent mainstream media coverage, while Masters' 19 Paralympic medals across three disciplines, as cited by corporate.visa.com, give the campaign credibility with disability sport communities that are underserved by most corporate advertising. The distribution footprint — Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, YouTube, and Hulu, per usa.visa.com — reaches premium streaming audiences in the United States who are already primed for long-form content consumption.
The campaign also operates within a payment market context that rewards brand salience. The global cards-and-payments market was estimated at approximately $108.38 billion in 2026, according to Mordor Intelligence, and Visa holds 38.7% of global branded-card purchase transactions in the first half of 2024, according to nilsonreport.com — a position that Olympic and Paralympic visibility is designed to reinforce against competitors including Mastercard and American Express in the US market. Clapboard rates "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" 63 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic coherence and athlete authenticity against execution that would benefit from greater creative distinction at the production level.
Visa's "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" is a 2026 Olympic and Paralympic campaign launched in the United States on January 26, 2026. It features anthem films for Mikaela Shiffrin and Oksana Masters, extending the brand's "Everywhere You Want to Be" platform by focusing on athlete journeys rather than medal outcomes, ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games.
Visa's Milano Cortina 2026 campaign features Mikaela Shiffrin and Oksana Masters. Shiffrin is the most decorated alpine skier in history with 107 World Cup wins and 164 podiums, according to corporate.visa.com. Masters holds 19 Paralympic medals across three disciplines, according to corporate.visa.com, making her one of the most versatile Paralympic athletes in modern sport.
Anomaly created Visa's "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" campaign, as reported by reel360.com. The agency produced anthem films for both Mikaela Shiffrin and Oksana Masters. Granular production credits, including director and director of photography, are not publicly documented at the time of writing.
Visa distributed "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" across broadcast, social, connected television, and online video in the United States. Media placements included Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, YouTube, and Hulu, as reported by usa.visa.com. Anthem films ran from January through February 2026, timed to the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
Visa's "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong strategic coherence and the authentic use of Mikaela Shiffrin and Oksana Masters as campaign subjects, set against execution that would benefit from greater creative distinction at the production level.
Visa's "Elevating the Power of Women in Sport" extends the "Everywhere You Want to Be" brand platform by shifting emphasis from results to the path that leads there. Earlier platform iterations foregrounded medals and product utility. The 2026 campaign, as reported by corporate.visa.com, centres resilience, setbacks, and the community that sustains elite athletic careers over time.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
