We are winter: Canada set for Sochi

With just over a month until the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, the Canadian Olympic Committee has launched its largest ad campaign yet in hopes of building excitement ahead of the February Games and connecting Sochi-bound athletes with Canadians from coast-to-coast.

Photo: CTV

In this YouTube screengrab, an image from the COC's "We Are Winter" campaign, which aims to build excitement ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, is seen. (Canadian Olympic Team)

Using multimedia advertisements shot in Calgary, Montreal, Quebec City and Whistler, B.C., the "We Are Winter" campaign kicked off on Tuesday. The print, online and television campaign features 17 Sochi medal hopefuls, including bobsledder Kaillie Humphries, snowboarder Mark McMorris and freestyle skier Mikael Kingsbury.

"With the campaign, we want to gather the country now," Canadian freestyle skier and assistant chef de mission for the Canadian Olympic team Jean-Luc Brassard told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday. "We don’t want to wait for the first medal to gather the entire country together."

Driven by the hashtag #WeAreWinter, the campaign highlights some of Canada’s most stunning winter backdrops and shows the high-performance training regimens of Canada's athletes.

"If you think about winter, it really defines us as a country," the COC's chief marketing officer Derek Kent told Canada AM. "Everyone has gone through a moment where they built a rink in their backyard or built a ski slope and what the athletes told us is that (winter) really defines them as winter athletes."

Created over a 16-month period, the English and French campaign was shot by Canadian director and producer Henry Lu and photographer Chris Gordaneer from Westside Studios. In total, the campaign features 10 different Olympic sports and will also include seven inspirational documentaries about the athletes.