Meet the Nottingham agency helping to keep the Winter Olympics Covid-free

Tim Bassford

A Nottingham creative agency is following up a successful partnership in the summer,  by working with the British Olympic Association (BOA) in the run-up to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics on a campaign promoting Covid-safe behaviours to Team GB athletes.

Turbine Creative has worked with a range of leading Team GB experts from the fields of medicine, sports performance, and behavioural psychology to establish the most effective communication methods.

The result is a campaign which features messaging focused on the ideas of protecting teammates and aligning with recipient’s moral values, along with providing a level of reassurance at what is likely to be a stressful time for athletes.

Turbine Creative was established just prior to the lockdown in 2020 by Tim Bassford. Having spent 18 years working in the creative industry working with some of the world’s biggest brands, Bassford says he founded the with a view of creating a “supremely customer-centric, passionately creative design service”.

Remaining healthy, both mentally and physically and more importantly covid-free, is critical to British Olympians success at these Olympic games, says Turbine. The campaign will be implemented on-site at the Olympic Village. In parallel, digital activation featuring a hero video will be deployed across multiple channels, targeting athletes at key touch points during their preparation and arrival at the games.

Greg Retter, head of performance services/Covid liaison officer at the British Olympic Association, said: “We set out to create a strong and impactful Covid-safe campaign to proactively ‘nudge’ a desirable behavioural outcome for the 1000-strong delegation of Team GB athletes and staff in Tokyo. Turbine Creative were incredibly responsive and agile in their approach to our brief, and the resulting print and digital campaign was one of the main pillars in our success to mitigate against any positive
Covid-19 cases within the Team GB delegation at The Olympic Games.”

Bassford added: ““We are incredibly proud to work with Team GB at such a crucial and significant time for athletes globally. Following Team GB’s huge success at Tokyo, we look forward to hearing how the campaign is received in Beijing and will be following the team’s success along with the rest of the country.”

Following Turbine Creative’s previous work for the Summer Olympics, all Team GB athletes remained Covid-free in what the Independent heralded as the “The Miracle of Tokyo”.