The Campaign

New Zealand is a small country with only 4million people. Because of this traditional advertising still works quite well and any branded content is usually just product placement ideas that piggyback on existing reality TV shows or traditional sports sponsorships. But because William was unknown and freediving wasn’t a spectator sport he had no existing platforms or fans we could use to leverage the sponsorship. To truly pull this idea off, we needed to turn William into a national hero, and we needed to broadcast the dive live on TV. However, alcohol advertising and promotion is heavily regulated by the New Zealand government via the Advertising Standards Authority, and there were several rules we had to navigate around. 1. Alcohol Advertisements shall not be shown on Television between 6am and 8:30 pm. 2. Television alcohol advertisements can not exceed six minutes per hour. So instead of an ad, we created an hour-long news story that ran at 8am in the morning. As well as a series of other content partnerships in the lead up to the dive that allowed us to integrate into usually restricted areas.

Results

For years Steinlager had been relying on The All Blacks and Team New Zealand to carry them on their shoulders. But now they needed a new story to tell. We had one in William Trubridge, a 14x world record breaking, world champion freediver. An amazing New Zealand sportsman who agreed to attempt a death-defying world record with us. However, hardly anyone in New Zealand knew of William or competitive freediving so it was a world record attempt that no-one would care about or see unless they were on a remote island in The Bahamas. Our strategy was to turn freediving into a spectator sport by televising his dive, live, to the entire country. First we introduced William to New Zealand through TV, cinema and billboards. Then we used PR and traditional advertising to announce that we were turning William’s world record attempt into a live experience called The 102m Deep Dive. Every major media outlet in New Zealand ran interviews with William and stories about the announcement. We kept New Zealanders engaged and informed about the attempt and the dangers and difficulties of freediving through social media, street posters and radio as well as partnerships with the NZHerald, herald.co.nz and BreakfastTV, who ran a series of editorial stories, interviews and news stories. Then on our website William's new fans could send him messages of support for the dive. This all lead to the live experience itself which was broadcast on Breakfast TV as an hour long live news show. Those who couldn't watch it live on TV could follow it in real time on radio and online. And with the use of a specially created tweeting sonar we updates were sent to twitter and digital billboards in New Zealand throughout the dive.

We had New Zealand's interest and support. Now we needed to ensure they watched the live experience. All our comms directed people to watch the live experience. On our website people could sign up for text and email reminders. People could also sign up for the reminders via shazam which integrated with our TV ad. We created a countdown to the experience on facebook. Breakfast TV, the NZ herald and herald.co.nz reminded their viewers and readers regularly about The Dive. And on the morning of the dive we roadblocked the digital billboard, radio and banner ad networks to drive viewers.

The most inaccessible and unknown sport in the world became the most watched New Zealand sporting event of 2014. - Nearly a quarter of the population tuned in to watch the event. - A combined New Zealand TV and online audience that was bigger than the Fifa World Cup final. - 129 news stories and interviews with every major media outlet in New Zealand. - 23,580,635 media impressions. - In a declining market Steinlager’s sales grew by 9%, twice the level expected. - William Trubridge has gone from being unknown to one of our most iconic sporting heroes.

Steinlager is an iconic New Zealand beer brand. Because of this they have always supported iconic New Zealand sporting heroes and events. William Trubridge is a world champion New Zealand freediver who was virtually unknown in his home country. When Steinlager asked us to come up with a new campaign for Steinlager Pure, we wanted to create an idea that would give William the recognition he deserved. So we decided to turn his next world record attempt into a live national event. The 102m Deep Dive. The problem was it was taking place 120 meters under the water 13000 kilometers away. We needed to find a way to bring to the whole country. It wasn’t enough to create it, put it online and hope that people would find it. We needed to stop the country, and we needed to do this while defying the conventions and rules governing advertising.