Campaign Brief Q&A with Deloitte Digital CCO Dan Wright: How Deloitte leveraged social economics to prove how sport can change the world

Last week Deloitte and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched ‘The First Effect’, a co-branded campaign via Deloitte Digital Australia + NZ, which sets out to create a new metric for success beyond the podium. Here CB sits down with Deloitte Digital CCO Dan Wright (pictured above) to learn how Deloitte leveraged social economics to prove how sport can change the world.

What inspired the idea of the First Effect?

Dan Wright: The Olympics has always been the measure of human physical achievement. It’s a stage where we’ve seen things achieved for the first time, over and over – We saw case after case of long-awaited athletic breakthroughs opening the floodgates for other athletes to do the same. So we started looking at other firsts, and what they might have made possible – the first female competitors, the first Paralympic Games, the first live broadcast. The more we looked, the clearer it became: Firsts of every kind are what moves humanity forward.

How did you go about making this campaign credibly Deloitte and not one of the other top tier
sponsors?

DW: It’s an insanely competitive time when iconic brands with deep pockets show up to compete for the world’s attention. We knew for a B2B brand like Deloitte to get a look in, we’d need to find that thing that was undeniably Deloitte, but equally connected to the humanity and spirit of the Olympics. In a way it was an advantage because it demanded something new.

Which other Deloitte teams/capabilities did it take to pull this campaign together?

DW: It turns out you need some proper brains to uncover and crunch the data to show how Sarah Attar – the first Saudi woman to compete at the Olympic Games – improved the health of other Saudi women years later. Deloitte’s Access Economics and research teams have taken an idea and given it the rigour that we hope will take it from an emotional story to an enduring truth.

Is there a hope that telling these stories of firsts will have a tangible effect on the games or the world more widely?

DW: The work is a collaboration between Deloitte and the IOC and we took that collaboration seriously. To us, the First Effect shouldn’t just find a way to insert Deloitte into the Olympic story, it should add positive energy to the Olympic and Paralympic Games as a whole. Our hope is that this idea creates a new metric for Olympic success in to the future.

Why do you think that sport, or more specifically the Olympics, is the right platform for a story of this scale?

DW: The Olympic stage is one the greatest on earth. The real question for us is did we have a story that could measure up to that scale? We found the best answer was in collaboration with the IOC – a shared story about what success really means for the world. It’s a story that I think brings

What are the most memorable firsts you’ve come across while developing this platform?

DW: We’ve seen a huge variety – from game-changing techniques like the Fosbury Flop to the inspiration of the first refugee team. For me, the Algerian runner, Abdellatif Baka who in Rio, 2016 become the first Paralympian to outpace the Olympic gold medalist is one of those moments that shows a global community what they are capable of and I expect it’s a space we’ll see plenty more firsts in the future.

What does the future look like for ‘The First Effect’? Is it done after Paris 2024?

DW: Deloitte’s partnership with the IOC takes us through to 2032, so we see this as an eight-year study. We will be tracking the unfolding global economic and societal impact of Olympic and Paralympic firsts from Paris 2024 all the way through to Brisbane in 2032. It’s a long game – one that will see a story of human progress unfold in realtime.