Para-athletes are extreme sports athletes in world class, but they do not get the same attention and recognition as able-bodies athletes. The perks for winning championships, where able-bodied athletes receive considerably large sums of prize money? A cheese wheel or a mug.
As main sponsor for the first World Para Snow Sports Championship, DNB wanted to equal out the differences by creating engagement and awareness around the para-athletes. We teamed up with someone who already had a wide coverage in their channels – World Champions Kjetil Jansrud, Aksel Lund Svindal and Ragnhild Mowinckel, with a total of 1 million followers on Instagram. We challenged them to swap their profiles for the para-athlete they admired the most and to post who they were rooting for. Their feeds were replaced with inspiring content from Norway’s para-athletes, who had their followers multiplied. Our DNB Young influencers raised the message on our platforms and generated hefty results in social media.
DNB also engaged the Norwegian population by giving away cash for watching the television broadcasts. 45 nations competed in alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, biathlon, and snowboarding with prize money for the first time ever.
The results were extremely impressive all round, and para-athletes increased their following by 43%.
