Visa Celebrates Brent Hayden's Medal Performance with a Real-Time Congratulatory TV Billboard

TORONTO, Aug. 2, 2012 /CNW/ - Following his bronze medal win, Visa, a Worldwide Olympic Games Sponsor for 26 years, introduced a new congratulatory TV billboard for Brent Hayden after his winning performance in the 100-metre freestyle swimming final at the London 2012 Olympic Games. The real-time congratulatory TV billboard with London 2012 Olympic Games footage, titled "Congratulations Brent," aired on Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium and features footage of Brent competing in London. To view the footage from the TV billboard, click here.

Brent's performance has earned Canada its sixth Olympic medal at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

"Visa is thrilled to celebrate Brent's hard earned medal through a real-time Go World congratulatory billboard," said Brenda Woods, Head of Marketing Canada, Visa Inc. "Along with the rest of Canada, we know how determined Brent has been to medal at these Olympic Games and we've been cheering for him through our Go World campaign."

Visa introduced its first congratulatory commercial in the U.S. during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and continued this tradition during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, releasing special-edition ads in Canada ("First Gold" which celebrated the country's first gold medal on home soil) and the U.S. (Julia Mancuso, skiing; Johnny Spillane, skiing; Seth Wescott, snowboarding). During the London 2012 Olympic Games, Visa also aired the real-time congratulatory commercial "Congratulations Emilie" celebrating Canadian athlete Emilie Heymans' historic fourth medal win in women's synchronized 3-metre springboard.

Visa's Olympic Games-themed integrated marketing campaign for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games - Go World - is the largest global and most social initiative in company history. The campaign, activated in more than 70 countries, utilizes popular social media platforms, along with television and digital advertising and usage promotions, to turn the passion of fans into online cheers that will help inspire athletes worldwide as they compete at the Games.

The campaign has generated more than 38 million cheers leading up to the London 2012 Olympic Games.  Visa reports that the top seven most-active "cheering" countries are the United States, Brazil, Russia, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Australia.

Fans can continue to voice their support for Brent as he competes in the 50M freestyle, as well as other Team Visa athletes in Canada still competing at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the form of cheers by submitting photos, videos and text cheers, performing one-click cheers, and viewing content through Visa's Cheer application on Facebook and by viewing and sharing video content on YouTube.

"Congratulations Brent" was produced by TBWA. To learn more about Go World or to view and download images, videos and other assets, visit www.visa.com/olympicmediakit.

About Visa Inc.

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable digital currency. Underpinning digital currency is one of the world's most advanced processing networks--VisaNet--that is capable of handling more than 20,000 transactions a second, with fraud protection for consumers and guaranteed payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank, and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa's innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: Pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. For more information, visit www.corporate.visa.com.

SOURCE: VISA Canada Corporation

Media Contacts: 
Janine Allen 
Fleishman Hillard 
416-645-3657 
[email protected] 

Erin Sufrin
Visa Canada
416-860-3869
[email protected]