For the last 25+ years, figure skating's highest honor of making the Olympic team was delivered through impersonal text messages or emails, usually received alone with no one there to share. Athletes experienced their life-defining moments in isolation.
For the first time in U.S. Figure Skating's history, we broke from tradition and surprised athletes, their coaches and families with their Olympic team notifications in person, filming their raw reactions to share with fans. While the entire series resonated deeply, Maxim Naumov’s video transcended sports storytelling entirely, becoming a story about human resilience. On January 29, 2025, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a military helicopter over Washington D.C., killing all aboard, including Olympic figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov. They were renowned coaches, beloved members of the skating community, and the parents of 23-year-old competitive skater Maxim Naumov. For twelve months, our audience witnessed Maxim’s journey through grief, his decision to persevere, and his fight to honor his parents' legacy on the ice. When he delivered career-defining performances at the 2026 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships that earned him his first Olympic team spot, almost exactly one year after losing his parents, the entire skating community came together to celebrate the power of perseverance through unimaginable loss. Through our video content were able to bring fans into the fold, witnessing his raw emotions of achieving a lifelong dream.
Our fans have invested years following these athletes' journeys through triumphs, setbacks, and everything in between. They deserved to experience the payoff alongside the athletes, not as an afterthought. This was honoring the relationship between athletes and the community that supports them, including bringing their families in to celebrate this pinnacle moment. The series received over 2.3 million views across our social platforms.
Maxim Naumov's Olympic team notification video is athlete storytelling at its purest: raw, honest, emotionally resonant, and profoundly human. It's a story that will outlive this Olympic cycle because it speaks to something universal: the human capacity to rise after falling, to honor those we've lost by continuing what they loved, and to find triumph even in the shadow of tragedy.
The Strategy:
Our approach centered on three pillars:
The Team Reveal generated more than 4.3 million views, 185,000 likes, and 1,900 comments across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, serving as a major driver within U.S. Figure Skating’s 2026 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships campaign.
Overall campaign performance delivered exceptional cross-platform growth:
To contextualize the impact, this year’s championships campaign produced exponential gains over the prior year, despite nearly identical content volume:
With comparable output year over year, these results demonstrate significant improvement in reach, engagement efficiency, and audience conversion. The campaign not only expanded visibility at scale but also deepened fan connection and measurable brand growth across platforms.
