Norsk Tipping, the Norwegian gambling company owned by the Norwegian government and administered by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture returns its profits to the Norwegian sports, culture and humanitarian causes. This year, €672.3 million will be divided between the three, including grassroots sports primarily through Grasrotandelen, a unique Norwegian program established by Norsk Tipping that allows you to direct a percentage of your gaming stake to a local team, club, or non-profit organisation of your choice.

That is the background to its new campaign, created by agency, Try, and directed by Bacon director, Martin Werner. The campaign film, For the Mediocre, celebrates the everyday players on the pitch, the dance floor and the trail.

View the commercial.

The film opens in reverence, using the visual grammar of sport, shot closely and building anticipation for something great about to happen. Then it doesn’t. The striker scuffs the shot. The basketball rims out. The cyclist meets the trail face-first. The talent here is being a near-miss, out-of-rhythm star. But every one of those small defeats resolves the same way – a community waiting with open arms to embrace the fall and laugh about it. As the narration notes, this is “a tribute to all those who never become the very best, but who we need the most”.

Werner shoots the misses with exactly the care usually reserved for the winning goal – same light, same slow motion, same reverence, so the bathos never tips into mockery, and the warmth lands naturally. The film closes on the line that has carried Norsk Tipping for years – “For all of us, to all of us. Give the dream a chance.”