Channel 4 Drops ‘Superhumans’ for Next Chapter of Paralympics Campaign

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. 

Aside from these characters, there are other creative elements that distinguish this from a typical Olympics or sporting ad. 

4Creative and director Steve Rogers from production company Biscuit Filmworks shot the film in London, rather than the location of the Olympics, and deliberately made it without “the romance and beauty of Paris but slightly more affronting, with brutal landscapes of industrial estates,” Atkin said. 

And the sound design is driven by a voiceover rather than a high-paced music soundtrack. 

“We wanted it to stand out and feel gutsy and bold, with a sense of irreverence and spirit,” Atkin said. “Because we are moving the conversation on and saying something new, if we had executed it in the way that we had executed every other Paralympics ad, that message wouldn’t have cut through as much.” 

Changing attitudes

“Considering What?” follows three previous chapters of the “Superhumans” campaign, launched in 2012 and coinciding with subsequent Games. 

Those ads swept industry awards shows, garnering Cannes Lions Grand Prix and D&AD Black Pencils, and they also made an impact in the real world: After the 2016 campaign, for example, research found that 74% of people felt more comfortable discussing disability after seeing it and 59% felt that it improved their perception of those with disabilities. 

As public attitudes about disability have evolved, so, too, has the broadcaster’s messaging. For the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, the ad focused on the “human” aspect of the term “superhuman,” with gritty shots of the athletes’ grueling training. 

This reflected how, as author and professor Peter Beresford wrote in The Guardian in 2016: “It’s time for policymakers to forget about calling disabled people ‘superhuman’ and instead to start making it possible for them to be treated as human, with equal civil and human rights.” 

As the term “superhuman” fell out of fashion when talking about disability, ahead of making Channel 4’s latest ad, “there was not even a big conversation about using ‘superhumans.’ Everyone naturally felt that it was time to move on from it,” Atkin said. 

“Society and attitudes change. It would be wrong if in 12 years, we were still having the same conversations. We’re now at a time where we can question the attitude around [disability] a bit more,” she explained. 

Channel 4 mirrors the message of the International Paralympic Committee, which in May released a campaign challenging condescending tropes about disabled people and the misperception that the Games aren’t a real, world-class sport. 

While Channel 4’s goal is to get people to watch the Paralympics, it is also to change how disabled sport is represented, Atkin said. 

“The job we’re trying to do is to shift conversations and move attitudes on, getting people to think about things in a way they haven’t before,” she added.