Zeno Thinks: The Power of Sport
We saw it last week with Newcastle United’s first silverware in 70 years: The power of sport to bring unbridled joy to an entire city.
And yet, more often than not, when we hear talk of the power of sport it’s ultimately to commercial ends: to raise awareness, build reputations, sell, and make an awful lot of money.
It’s easy to feel jaded in this era when sport seems utterly omnipresent and no stone is left unmonetised.
But some of our team had a refreshing reminder of what “the power of sport” really means when we attended the Special Olympics World Winter Games in Turin last week with our client, Special Olympics partner The Coca-Cola Company.
“The power of sport” hits differently when a Swiss figure skater with cerebral palsy tells you how sport saved her life. Or when her mother tells you how the gracefulness of skating lets her daughter float lightly through life in a way she cannot do otherwise.
It means more when you see a unified floorball team of disabled and mainstream athletes playing, celebrating and joking around together.
And it means a lot more when there’s a packed stadium for the opening ceremony. When members of the Italian military salute an intellectually-disabled torch bearer like she’s a four-star general. When every passenger on your flight bursts into spontaneous applause as the pilot announces that Team GB is on board. And when all of Turin is covered in posters and banners proudly welcoming Special Olympics.
Because if there’s one thing sport is really, really powerful at, it’s getting mainstream attention for marginalised people and issues, and then normalising them.
As David Evangalista, president of Special Olympics in Europe and Eurasia, told an event hosted by The Coca-Cola Company: sport gives everyone the right to take part, to high-five teammates and, crucially, to be seen.
Seeing inclusion in action and seeing people with intellectual disabilities excel in ways most people would never expect – and would never, ever see in their day-to-day lives – is that most fundamental of communications principles: show, don’t tell.
Another thing stood out: Leaders were unafraid to raise uncomfortable truths and talk directly and forcefully about them.
It was striking that several senior figures mentioned how people with intellectual disabilities and their families are made to feel ashamed.
Corporate comms, especially around sports, has a tendency to smooth off so many edges as to leave what’s said a shapeless mush.
But if you acknowledge an injustice, and make people feel uncomfortable, there’s then a more powerful incentive to put it right.
“Inclusion” is now a loaded word, but no one listening to those speeches could leave thinking that the opposite – exclusion – was anything to be accepted.
Because sometimes acknowledging the unsayable is the first step towards accomplishing the impossible.
As one sports brand would have it for 20 years: impossible is nothing. And that belief, really, is the true power of sport.
