Lausanne, Switzerland

 

The shortlist for the 2022 International Content Marketing Awards has just been released, and the International Skating Union (ISU) is honored to announce that its #UpAgain campaign has been nominated in the “Best Use of Social Media (B2C)” and the “Best Specialist Campaign” categories.

The Awards, organized by the Content Marketing Association, recognize the very best content marketing campaigns, strategies, teams and individuals in the world of content creation on an annual basis. According to the Content Marketing Association, this year has been exceptionally rich and innovative in content creation as testified by the number of organizations and the variety of countries entering the competition – more than ever before

“We are so incredibly proud to be shortlisted for two Awards and for the athletes’ stories to be recognized and celebrated in this way,” affirms ISU President Jae Youl Kim. “Fans felt a real connection with our athletes, their life stories and ice skating sports through the #UpAgain campaign. By creating digital proximity between our community and athletes, this campaign contributed to making the ISU the most engaged winter sports federation on social media at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.”

The #UpAgain campaign celebrates the unbreakable spirit that drives athletes to compete on ice. We identified that skaters and fans engage on average in 50,000 social media conversations a year about the pain and fear of falling on the ice. In response, we created #UpAgain, a campaign dedicated to inspiring skaters to share their personal experiences and overcome their challenges on and off the ice.

#UpAgain has become part of skating culture and is recognized and used by fans and athletes around the world.

Our goal for the #UpAgain campaign was to bring ice skating sports center stage and be part of the top winter sports on social media by the end of the Beijing 2022 Olympics.

The ISU focus lay in giving a personal tone to its campaign by telling the athletes’ remarkable stories and highlighting their talent as they competed to get #UpAgain on the podium in Beijing.

To enhance the campaign’s reach globally but also locally in China, the ISU partnered with multiple agencies including a social media Chinese agency with the goal to customize the content for the host nation.

The result was unprecedented levels of engagement from the community who loved the activation.

By the end of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games the data showed great results:

  • Top of the winter sports leaderboard in social media engagements

  • +204% increase in social media engagements in comparison to the 2018 Olympics

  • 3M engagements across all ice skating disciplines

  • 30% more engagements than the average winter sport in Beijing

  • First in social media new followers

  • 65k new followers

  • 3M increase in social media followings compared to the 2018 Olympics

  • 4 times more new followers than the closest competitor

  • 1 winter sport on Weibo

Further information on the #UpAgain campaign is available here.

The 2022 International Content Marketing Awards shortlist can be viewed here.

The International Content Marketing Awards follows a rigorous judging process led by independent content marketing experts, who select the very best examples of content marketing to win an Award after two rounds of judging. The second round is about to commence, to select gold, silver and bronze winners. The winners of the 2022 International Content Marketing Awards will be announced in a virtual live ceremony at the end of November.

 Further details will be communicated soon on www.the-cma.com/awards .