European Athletics has today (13) unveiled a major social media campaign that will be rolled out across digital platforms over the next six months in celebration of the governing body for athletics in Europe reaching its 50th anniversary in 2020.
The series looks back at 50 great moments over the past five decades by celebrating the achievements of the greatest European athletes as well as historic and memorable moments from previous championships.
All 50 moments will be taken exclusively from major European competitions from the Helsinki 1971 European Athletics Championships, the first event organised by the then newly-created European Athletic Association (EAA), all the way through to the sell-out Glasgow 2019 European Athletics Indoor Championships. The first moment will be published tomorrow and will look back at Armand Duplantis' record-breaking feats at the Berlin 2018 European Athletics Championships.
Selected from the European Athletics’ archives, the series will contain a mixture of both video clips and still images with graphics edited into short-form storytelling in order to provide a look back at iconic moments from major European events over the past 50 years. The series will run across all of European Athletics’ digital channels under the hashtag #EA50.
Commenting on the launch, European Athletics CEO Christian Milz commented: 'We are launching this at a very specific moment in the history of athletics, and sport in general, currently in lockdown and where rights holders are revisiting their archives searching for content. We will be actively asking our member federations to participate using the hashtag #EA50 and join us by selecting their greatest moments from their history.'
Rob Faulkner, Head of Communications at European Athletics, said: 'The idea behind the project was to celebrate 50 years of European Athletics but in a modern digital way. We chose to look back in our history and select 50 great sporting moments, making use of the investment made in recent years digitising our archive, and to use this as a catalyst to involve our member federations across digital channels. The creation of ‘50 Golden Moments’ was the result.
'This is the start of our foray into the production of original content and we are already working on a longer-form series that will focus on the human stories behind certain high profile athletes. This added value content creation is something that many brands are looking for right now given the current lack of live events due to the coronavirus pandemic. At European Athletics we are already working with our partners to understand how we can return value to them using different assets given the postponement, or cancellation, of many events this year.'
The 50 Golden Moments will be shared across European Athletics’ social media accounts and will also feature as a part of a revamp of the federation’s YouTube channel as it increasingly looks towards digital channels to enhance its engagement with existing athletics fans, as well as reach out to a younger generation of digitally-literate sports fans, including Millennials and Generation Z.