Environmental Campaigning on an olympic scale

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The Challenge

The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics were tipped to be the first "reform" Games under the IOC’s new sustainability guidelines. However, this led to a significant "rhetoric vs. reality" controversy. Critics argued that despite promises to use existing infrastructure, the Games have resulted in permanent environmental damage to the fragile Alpine ecosystem, including elevated water extraction to create artificial snow, deforestation, significant new building, road and concrete works, and a Governmental waiving of Environmental Impact Assessments. Touted as a "low carbon" event by promoters, estimates point to a staggering footprint of nearly 1 million tonnes of CO2, produced primarily due to infrastructure works and spectator travel.

Our Strategic Thinking

With the games already underway, we identified an opportunity to reach a highly captive audience: readers already immersed in event coverage. We placed full-page ads in leading sports and news publications running alongside daily and weekly reporting — deliberately timing them to cut through the short-lived euphoria that typically surrounds global sporting events, and redirect attention toward something more lasting.

To extend the campaign's reach beyond the games themselves, we scheduled follow-up ads in specialist winter sports and equipment magazines — keeping the message alive among an engaged, enthusiast audience long after the closing ceremony.

Sparse Visuals & Minimal Copy

Sports coverage is notorious for information overload. To cut through the noise, we took a deliberately reductive approach — stripping the design back to a single stark visual and just enough copy to stop the reader in their tracks. The aim was to redirect attention to what actually matters: the environmental cost of mass events. The copy itself is intentionally divisive, designed to provoke a moment of guilt and land a simple, unavoidable truth — that our choices, collectively, will determine the outcome for our planet.