Comcast Celebrates the Inspiring Side of the Games

Wasn’t that a great Olympics? So great that we can feature one last ad from the Paris 2024 games, putting the spotlight on one of the most enduring qualities of the games: the sportsmanship and respect the athletes show to one another. Every Olympics seems to produce iconic moments like this – athletes helping one another finish, hugging or shaking hands after a tough event, or this year the sight of Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast in the world, bowing down to rising star and gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.

It’s moments like this, as much as the intense victories and spectacular achievements, that inspire the kids watching to be better people as well as better athletes. That’s the message of Comcast’s 2024 ad, “Bringing Inspiration Home”, which pays tribute to the sportsmanship shown by Olympic athletes over the years. The ad, from media agency Spark Foundry, is a sequel to a 2022 Comcast ad which introduced the theme of sportsmanship in the context of that year’s Winter Games. It was successful enough for this follow-up, which performs exceptionally well on our Test Your Ad platform.

The genius of Comcast’s ad is the way it interweaves sporting moments of fair play with moments that mirror them involving kids playing sport. A pair of swimmers embracing one another after a hard-fought duel in the pool cuts to kids congratulating each other on a great race, for instance. And in the ad’s emotional climax, we see the wide, solemn eyes of a child watching a track athlete help up a fallen rival. Cut to the soccer field, and the same child reaching out to someone on their opposite team. When kids see athletes respecting one another and showing sportsmanship, says the ad, they’re inspired to take the same behavior home.

How appropriate then that the ad inspires great positive emotion in its own right. It’s a confident, beautifully edited piece with a brilliantly chosen classic soul soundtrack from Motown artist David Ruffin, designed to spark positive emotion across generations watching. The ad hits a plateau of very high positive response early on and never lets the happiness fall off, with that scene at the end proving to be the commercial’s peak of positivity. The result is an ad with a mighty 5.7-Stars, a score which means the ad has the potential to drive Exceptional long-term brand growth given the right investment. (Only 1% of ads hit the 5-Star bracket)

The secret sauce powering the ad’s success is the many scenes of human togetherness and what Orlando Wood, in his book Look Out, calls “between-ness” – often wordless scenes which put the spotlight on relationships between people, with gestures and facial expressions telling a positive story. Between-ness works so well because it grabs the attention of the brain’s right-hemisphere, which pays attention to context and relationships and is associated with more effective, long-term responses to advertising. By turning the spotlight away from highly individual triumph, and putting it on moments that athletes share with one another, Comcast have made an ad built for right-brain appeal – and for commercial gain.