Creative Execution

The Tweeting Sonar used a combination of sonar and twitter to send the first ever tweets from 102meters underwater. A converted fish finder floated on a pontoon above William as he dived and used high power sonar to work out how deep he was throughout the dive, it then sent that that data to a computer which matched it up with a tweet written by William before the dive that gave more information on what he would be going through at that depth. The tweet was then instantly posted to twitter and digital billboards throughout New Zealand.

Using a combination of simple technology, we found a way to broadcast an inaccessible sport in real time. As a result the campaign received nearly ten million twitter impressions – over 2x the population of New Zealand and William Trubridge’s twitter following has increased by 67%. Helping us turn an unknown New Zealander into a national hero and a sport most New Zealanders had never even heard of into the most watched New Zealand sporting event of 2014, with a bigger combined TV and online viewership than the biggest All Blacks game of the year and the Fifa World Cup final.

William Trubridge is a 15x world-record breaking New Zealand freediver. Despite this he was relatively unknown in his home country. Steinlager asked us to do something that would finally give him the recognition he deserved. So we decided turn his next world record attempt into a live sporting event. Although freediving is not a spectator sport, we wanted the whole country to follow the dive. We had already teamed up with NZs most popular morning news show to broadcast it live but because it was happening at 8am we also needed to engage those who were on their way to work. Watching freediving is beautiful and intense, but it’s only when listening to William talk about what his mind and body go through, that you fully appreciate how difficult it is. So we decided to create Tweeting Sonar so William could send tweets as he dived.