H/L, a full-service, independent marketing and advertising agency based in Oakland, California, launches a new multimedia Olympics sponsorship campaign for Toyota, featuring Olympians: Simone Manuel, Maggie Steffens, Alex Massialas and Summer Sanders.

After a full year’s delay and much uncertainty, the Olympic Games have opened in Tokyo. To celebrate Toyota’s ongoing global sponsorship of Team USA and to connect it with Northern California and the Central Valley, H/L has launched a campaign featuring Gold Medal athletes with Northern California ties, in the theme of resilience that has punctuated these Olympic Games.

The messages of competition, determination and triumph are delivered by Northern California-native and two-time 1992 Gold Medalist, Summer Sanders, who showcases the Olympic spirit that drives today’s athletes to compete on the world stage, by asking “what drives you?”

“This is more than just a sponsorship campaign for Toyota,” said Dallas Baker, VP Executive Creative Director.  “It’s meant to celebrate local Olympic heroes, inspire viewers, and to get them thinking about what drives them personally, too.”

The campaign was shot amid COVID-related production challenges in early 2020 and 2021 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Danville and San Carlos, CA, in partnership with Wolf House Productions, H/L’s fully integrated in-house studio, which provides filming, editing, motion graphics and other post-production capabilities within H/L’s Oakland headquarters.