Believe, belong, become, boring, bizarre: Brisbane Olympics motto panned as ‘lazy and weirdly evangelical’

If you typed the words “believe, belong and become” into a Google video search on Thursday morning, the first return may have been a sermon by TJ Mauldin, the lead pastor of the First Baptist church of Tifton, Georgia.

Directly below the bearded and blue-jeaned pastor’s video under that alliterative banner, you may have clicked through to a sermon by West Florida Baptist church’s Mike Brown, who had those three b-words emblazoned on a snug-fitting black T-shirt.

“These aren’t just words on a shirt,” the tanned, fit and immaculately groomed senior pastor proclaims. “This is the message and the heartbeat and the passion of God’s word – and it oughta be the message and the heartbeat and the passion of his church!”

From Lewis Center for Church Leadership Rev Dexter Udell Nutall’s Belong, Believe, Become: Engaging Millennials and Gen Z in Faith to Father George from St Anastasia Catholic church’s Introduction to the Three Bs (Belong, Believe, Become) – scrolling down the list on the world’s predominant search engine, every video return on those three combined words, in fact, may have led you to the impassioned word of God.

Later in the day, however, after the alchemical undertaking of the algorithms, those same three words may have returned a very different top search result: Believe. Belong. Become. Brisbane 2032.

“This is our time,” the Paralympic swimming and wheelchair basketball champion Ellie Cole says in the two-and-a-half-minute hype reel. “Our moment to believe.”

“Belong,” the sprinter Patrick Johnson adds.

“Become,” the Paralympian Madison de Rozario concludes.

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For this is the “Games vision” of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, revealed on Wednesday afternoon, after what organisers described as “the largest consultation process Brisbane 2032 has undertaken to date”.

Led by communication consultancy Rowland, this three-word vision was formed after “more than 6,000 Australians had their say”, according to the press release.

For the Brisbane 2032 president, Andrew Liveris – as it was for West Florida Baptist church’s Mike Brown – they were more than just words.

“Our Games Vision has significant symbolism behind it, with the genesis of each word acting as our north star towards the delivery of our Games in 2032 and an exciting era beyond,” Liveris said.

The advertising director Dee Madigan, however, reckons those words may have had a different origin story.

A regular panellist on Gruen Planet – the ABC show that unpicks the world of advertising – Madigan says the Olympic slogan feels “strange and Christian schooley”.

“I think they’ve stolen the school motto from pretty much every Christian school in the country!” she tells the Guardian.

“Become? Become what?!? Become someone stuck in a traffic queue? Become someone who is paying an inordinate amount of money for a bottle of water?”

After an involvement in Labor campaigns, including leading its advertising for the successful 2022 and 2025 federal efforts, Madigan says she understands that coming up with a slogan “where you have got a plethora of stakeholders” is a difficult task.

In 2008 the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee announced the motto of the Beijing 2008 Games as the slightly ominous One World, One Dream.

Organisers of Paris 2024 seemed to be riffing of a Stanley Kubrick erotic thriller when they created the motto Games Wide Open, while those of South Korea’s m2018 Winter Olympics might have commissioned a wifi provider to dream up theirs: Passion. Connected.

“By the time everyone puts their two bobs in, you’ve usually ended with 27,000 words – I understand how difficult that can be,” Madigan says. “But they have done a terrible job. It feels lazy and weirdly evangelistic.”

Madigan says the slogan is a missed opportunity that could have been a promotional tool for visitors, or stoked a sense of pride. It could have been a play on Australian vernacular. It might have been humorous, spoken to the Aussie spirit of Queensland idiosyncrasy.

“People are gonna come here and think we’re all holy baby Jesus people,” she says.