Rugby Australia with New Zealand Rugby launched a new season hype and ticket drive campaign on 13 February promoting the 23 February new Super Rugby season kickoff with work spearheaded by a hero spot called ‘The Power Of The Pacific: There’s Something In The Water’.
Strategically, the kickoff campaign highlights the regional nature of the DHL Super Rugby Pacific competition: a tournament played by teams from Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand. The big idea pays tribute to the very force that connects and binds these countries together using the Pacific Ocean itself as a visual metaphor for what links them all.
Launched in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands on paid and owned platforms and helmed by Revolver Director Richard Bullock, the national governing bodies’ marketing burst features stars from the DHL Super Rugby Pacific: 24 teams from 12 different teams.
(Plus an additional 44 players present in the final promo if you add in the player voices signing the Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika).
The creative, which was shot in both Australia and New Zealand, features action and stunts all performed by the players themselves as they showcase their skills and talents tackling, passing and even running underwater as a testament to their supreme athlete ability on land.
According to the Revolver team, the film blended footage of a shoot in Auckland with Pacific Ocean imagery shot in Byron Bay, plus some VFX work using blue screen.
According to Director of Photography Stefan Jose, the video used three different cameras including a Phantom camera (at 600fps), while the New Zealand crew had previously worked on several underwater feature films including ‘The Meg’.
According to Rugby Australia’s Head of Brand and Innovation Matt McGrath, the campaign takes: “the game they play in heaven and played it under the ocean to create something truly magic. The Power of the Pacific idea had been there on the website banner since the competition began and [this campaign] brings it to life through an amazing and spectacular film,”
“I was thinking about how this part of the world manages to produce these amazing athletes who have permeated the entire world of Rugby. This competition is the source of all that talent. Maybe ‘There was something in the water’ in the Pacific,” explained Director Richard Bullock. “It was a short step then to players literally competing in the Pacific Ocean. Early dreams of traveling to Samoa or Fiji for some fun in the sun were immediately challenged by getting players from 12 regional teams to the same place on the same day. We didn’t want to simply create underwater rugby. The real ambition of the idea was to accentuate the forces applied during actual tackles and key rugby moments. So capturing the impact moments on the surface from players was key.”
The campaign was created for a marketing team at client Rugby Australia which included Head of Brand and Innovation Matt McGrath, Head of Marketing SRP, SRCs and Community Dan Wilkins, Content Capture Jack McGrath and Content Producer Nick Holland, with input from New Zealand Rugby Senior Marketing Manager Megan Cameron, New Zealand Rugby Marketing Co-ordinator: Danielle Bason, New Zealand Rugby Stills and Video Content Interviewer Mac Leesburg, New Zealand Rugby Communications Manager Kylie Devlin-Sousa.
The team at production company Revolver included Director Richard Bullock, Concept Richard Bullock, Managing Director / Co-Owner Michael Ritchie, Executive Producer / Partner Pip Smart, Producer Nicole Crozier, Director of Photography Stefan José and Underwater Operator Murray Milne.
Post production was handled by Heckler with ECD Jamie Watson, Executive Producer Steven Marolho, Head of Production Amy Jarman, Lead Editor Andrew Holmes, Flame Online Julian Ford, Compositors Ran Xie and Troy Darben, Colourist Fergus Rotherham, Sound Designer Dave Robertson and Executive Producer Dave Kelly.
From striking surf film to still photographs of Olympic divers, aquatic imagery is a familiar feature of sports advertising – well, of water sports advertising. This is a rare approach when it comes to promoting land sports.
The team used ‘mid journey- AI’ to help visualise the concept: which the production company also described as a ‘really useful tool to express the idea to the client, DOP, lighting team, production crew and also gave the players an idea of what we wanted from their performance’.