“Mission Olympic – Wanted: Germany’s Most Active City”, a new nationwide city competition initiated by Coca-Cola Germany and Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (DOSB), aims at inspiring people for more physical activity & new civic sport initiatives through a competition mechanism.Both initiators want to send out new impulses for more movement on a long-term basis and communicate best-practice-examples to activate people for more engagement in sport projects.Mission Olympic with its competition mechanism is an inspiring campaign. In the first year 98 cities applied and over 2,000 civic initiatives. From the competition resulted new sport projects, initiatives and networks. All cities stressed in particular the lasting effect.

With Mission Olympic as a roof, the “Festivals of Sports” were inspirited concerning the number of participants and the quality. Nearly 350,000 people joined the festivals in five final cities in 2008. Additionally, every sporting activity of the participants counted towards winning the title “Germany’s most active city” which included a 100,000 euro prize for its local sports program.In conclusion Mission Olympic as sport program & city competition helped popular mass sport to gain more public appreciation, e.g. from January until December 2008 the media coverage with 3,700 publications reached more than 278 million contacts.

In May 2007 Coca-Cola launched the project “Mission Olympic” together with the DOSB.

With PR work and Direct Mailings to the mayors in Germany and other decision makers, the target groups continuously received updates on the progress of the program.The 18 month competition had three steps:1) Application of cities from Germany2) Announcement of candidate cities for the next round (by the jury), they have to activate people and sport groups to apply with sporty citizen initiatives 3) Final cities for the last round, i.e. these cities have to organise a sport event, on which the activities of the participants will be counted.This means, an independent Mission Olympic Jury nominates and awards winners in two competitions:- Germany’s most active cities,- The sportiest citizen initiatives that support activity in everyday life.Almost 100 cities and more than 2,000 private and voluntary initiatives from all over Germany followed the media appeal (print, TV, radio & online and the platform www.mission-olympic.de) and handed in an application.

98 German cities participated in the first competition. More than 2,000 civil initiatives for a more active lifestyle were activated.All participating German cities in particular stressed the long lasting effect of Mission Olympic: The competition enriched the cities’ sport program and network and also inspirited the traditional “Festivals of Sports” regarding the number of participants and the quality.In 2008, nearly 350,000 people joined these sport festivals during five “City Finals” (after 190,000 in 2007 without Mission Olympic).

Additionally, every sporting activity the participants competed in counted towards winning the title of “Germany’s most active city” with an award of 100,000 euro for its local sports program.In conclusion Mission Olympic as sport program & city competition helps popular mass sport to gain more public appreciation. For example: from January 2008 until December 2008 the media coverage with nearly 3,700 publications reached more than 278 million contacts.More than 1,700 articles presented civil sports initiatives, 1,500 articles asked people to practice a more active lifestyle and more sports.