100 years of emotion, 100 years of Winter Games

One hundred years have passed since the city of Chamonix, French Alps, witnessed the Olympic flame of the Winter Olympics being lit for the first time, hosting 258 athletes across nine different sports for 10 days. In commemoration of this milestone, the International Olympic Committee, in collaboration with Burns The Agency, has recently launched the global campaign "100 years of emotion, 100 years of Winter Games".

Facing such a special briefing, the agency's initial consideration was how athletes competed a century ago and what has changed since then. These questions triggered a two-month search for images in the Olympic archive, resulting in an entirely manual and artisanal effort that allowed us to embark on a century-long journey through all the image capture technologies that have existed. This ranged from a cinematograph placed on a ski slope in Chamonix in 1924 to a 4K technology-equipped GoPro mounted on a ski jumper's suit.

In the words of Pablo Madrid, Executive Creative Director at Burns, "diving into the Olympic archive is both a privilege and an extremely challenging task, given its vastness and complexity. We started a puzzle without even knowing the final image, trusting the process and a desire: 'Surely there is an image that fits'... until the pieces began to come together."

This effort sparked the insight that gives life into the campaign: the world has changed significantly, technology has evolved in unimaginable ways, but the harsh conditions of Winter Games and the athletes' dedication remain the same. The same cold, the same gestures, the same commitment to excellence in an utterly hostile environment.

The same emotion. One hundred years later.