IAAF: The World’s Best Are Coming to Portland

To promote the World Indoor Track & Field Championships for the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) we imagined a series of improvisational vignettes that would capture the eccentricities of Portland’s people and culture.

Each of the vignettes were intended to be a humorous take on daily life in Portlandia, with an athlete unknowingly coming face-to-face with the city’s quirky populous, or trying to blend into the culture.

In order to pull this off the campaign needed to be unscripted, and the impromptu nature of our approach had to be genuine—completely unrehearsed. We communicated this to the athletes ahead of time, telling them only that they’d be interacting with people in a setting TBD and to just “play along.” As for the “people” the athletes would be interacting with, we cast local improvisational comics to play the roles of a hotel concierge, a TV journalist, and a hotel valet.

As you’ll see, when all the artificiality of production was removed from the equation and the athletes were free to just “be themselves,” the most mundane and routine exercises suddenly feel energized when the athletes encounter “Portlandia” for the first time. The campaign received a lot of attention and press worldwide, including being featured on BBC Sports Hour.

Concept, Campaign Development, Copywriter, Creative Director, Director

Agency: Downstream