Strategy Needs a Story: Why NSOs Are Turning Plans into Campaign Films

Netball Australia has just launched 'Made in Netball' with a cinematic, emotion-led film, players, coaches, kids, community moments and high-res visuals. It feels less like a strategy release and more like a declaration of identity. This morning, NRL Touch Football followed with 'The Next Play', rolling out a video built around nostalgia & clean messaging. Paddle Australia has taken a similar approach this year with 'Paddle Forward' pairing polished visuals with simple, confident storytelling to articulate where the sport is heading.

None of these are traditional promo clips. They’re campaign-quality assets being used to introduce a long-term strategy and that shift is telling. For years, strategic plans lived quietly in PDFs and media releases. What we’re seeing now is a move toward strategy as a public narrative - something that needs to be communicated, understood, and believed by the people who power the sport. Many NSOs are now outsourcing these video pieces to external creative agencies. Sports are recognising that to “sell” their strategic plan to get communities, partners, and participants to care, they need high-res storytelling that can compete in the digital environments audiences already are. Strategy has to live in the same ecosystem as every other piece of content: fast, emotional, modern, and visually confident. If the story doesn’t land on digital, the strategy won’t either.

This shift is also happening because the environment has changed. Participation, pathways, funding, talent, and visibility are under pressure. Strategy has become public positioning, a sport’s way of saying: here’s who we are, here’s what we stand for, and here’s where we’re going. A well-crafted film can convey identity, ambition, and values in seconds, in ways a written document simply can’t. Then there’s the context of Brisbane 2032. The competition for relevance, investment, and narrative ownership has already begun. Stakeholders want clarity and capability. So producing a strategy with campaign-level creative becomes a signal of readiness: an indication that the organisation understands its audience, its environment, and the story it needs to tell to secure its place in the decade ahead.

This is where digital matters most. Most people won’t read a 40-page strategy, but they will watch a short piece of storytelling that captures the heartbeat of a sport. These videos become ongoing assets, partner tools, participation promotions, AGM openers, recruitment material, and brand identity anchors. They’re built once but used everywhere.

The interesting part isn’t the production quality, it’s the intentionality. Sports aren’t creating these films to look modern. They’re using storytelling to carry strategy into the spaces where people actually engage, believe, and respond. In a landscape where attention is scarce and competition is high, outlining a future isn’t enough. You have to translate it into a story people want to follow