Overview
Won a competitive tender to build "GetSet," an educational injury and illness prevention tool commissioned by the International Olympic Committee for the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games, then worked on the go-to-market strategy to scale it beyond the Games.
Who This Is For
Sports federations, research institutions and education programmes that hold expert knowledge their audience is not using. This case is most useful if:
- you have published a resource that is accurate but rarely used
- your audience is athletes, coaches or trainers rather than specialists
- you want a tool built for one event to reach a wider audience afterwards
The Challenge
The IOC needed an educational tool to raise athletes' and coaches' awareness of injury and illness prevention, for the Culture & Education Programme at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games.
The work was commissioned through Prof. Roald Bahr's Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (NIH), under a signed agreement with the IOC's Medical and Scientific Department. A website already existed. The problem was that nobody used it.
Our Approach
Making Waves won the build through NIH's open tender, with a methodology based on its "WaveMaker" human-centred service design approach.
- Co-created build: designed in close co-creation with NIH and the Sports Injury Research Centre, and built by a cross-office team in Oslo and Poland.
- The Get Set app: formally accepted by the client ahead of the Games.
- A consumer follow-on: the Get Set content became Skadefri, a Norwegian website with iOS and Android apps, which shipped to the App Store.
- Go-to-market strategy: the team now behind ECM.DEV wrote the strategy for scaling the tool beyond the Youth Olympic Games, with B2C campaigns for athletes and trainers, B2B campaigns for national and international sports federations, sport- and geography-specific search advertising, and amplification through IOC partner channels.
Impact
A resource nobody used became a formally accepted IOC tool, delivered ahead of the Youth Olympic Games under a signed agreement with IOC and NIH leadership, including sports-medicine researcher Prof. Roald Bahr.
It outlived the event. The same content shipped as Skadefri, a Norwegian consumer app, and the go-to-market strategy set out how to extend its reach to sports federations worldwide.
Expert content rarely fails for lack of accuracy. It fails when nobody has designed how the audience will meet it.
Delivered while employed at Making Waves (later NoA Ignite). The core 'GetSet' tool was built by the Making Waves (later NoA Ignite) team under a signed agreement between the IOC and the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (NIH); the confirmed personal contribution was the go-to-market and scale-up strategy. Any public information referenced here is used for identification and does not imply endorsement.
Topics
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