ADWEEK will be all over Cannes. Subscribe to unlock unlimited access to all our coverage and analysis.
British broadcaster Channel 4’s “Superhumans” campaign for the Paralympic Games is considered seminal advertising that has helped change people’s attitudes about disability. However, for the Paris 2024 Games, the brand dropped the term “superhumans” altogether as it aims to progress the narrative again.
“Considering What?,” created by in-house agency 4Creative, challenges the public to reconsider their perceptions of Paralympians. It frames the tournament as a sporting event with elite athletes on par with the Olympic Games, rather than in a tier below.
Channel 4’s recent research found that nearly 60% of people said they watch the Paralympics to “see athletes overcoming their disabilities,” but just 37% said they view the Games for “exciting sporting competition.”
The brand’s new film doesn’t focus on overcoming disability, but on impressive training regimes and physical feats, in which the Paralympians must battle the same forces as any other athlete: gravity, friction and time.
This marks the first time Channel 4 hasn’t used the term “superhumans” in a campaign since it won the U.K. broadcast rights to the Paralympics in 2012.
The ad, which is supported by nationwide billboards, turns the lens on viewers themselves, correcting well-meaning but patronizing phrases about Paralympic sports such as one onlooker who comments, “He’s incredible for someone like that.”
The forces of gravity, friction and time are personified by menacing and irritating characters such as a shirtless man (Gravity) holding a beer and cackling at Paralympic wheelchair rugby star Aaron Phipps.
Meanwhile, Friction is a boy racer performing donuts in his yellow sports car and whooping at Paralympic medalist Sarah Storey as she races her bike. And Paralympic sprinter Emmanuel Oyinbo-Coker outraces Lady Time, who watches from the crowd with a stopwatch in hand.
These unsettling figures “gave us clear antagonists and an enemy for the athletes,” while serving as visual motifs for the challenges that Paralympics athletes must overcome that have nothing to do with disability, said Lynsey Atkin, executive creative director of 4Creative.
