Visa Celebrates Emilie Heyman's Medal Performance with Real-Time Congratulatory Commercial

TORONTO, July 30, 2012 /CNW/ - Visa, a Worldwide Olympic Games Sponsor for 26 years, introduced a new congratulatory commercial celebrating Emilie Heyman's bronze medal performance in women's synchronized 3-metre springboard at the London 2012 Olympic Games. The spot, entitled "Congratulations Emilie," aired on Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium and features an image of Emilie on the podium in London. To view the ad, click here.

Emilie's performance, as one half of the Synchro Team, has earned Canada its first Olympic medal at London 2012 and she becomes the first female diver to win a medal at four consecutive Olympic Games.

"We're honored to celebrate Emilie's memorable Olympic Games performance through our real-time Go World congratulatory commercial," said Brenda Woods, Head of Marketing Canada, Visa Inc. "We, along with fans across Canada, have been cheering for Emilie through our Go World campaign and we couldn't be happier for her."

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).

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 32 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 Emilie leading up to the Women's 3m Springboard on August 3, 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 Emilie" 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