We created 'Fly Like Rufus', a 360 Virtual Reality experience of the central character monitoring the skies over the All England Lawn Tennis Club at dawn. The film was supplemented by other ‘perfect flight’ content captured using cutting-edge drone technology. It follows Rufus’s actual flight patterns, so participants can experience what it’s like to fly over the historic grass courts, past the jubilant crowds, and weave in and out of some of the greatest tennis battles ever played.

The Fly Like Rufus film experience was fully immersive in physical experiential (Oculus Rift fly simulator installation at Waterloo Station London), but was also accessible to a wider audience via the “new” YouTube 360-degree technology.

Launched in June 2015, we also created the first ever 360-degree pre-roll ad to be distributed on YouTube. Owned channels then drove viewers into the content environment to explore and discover deeper, more immersive, virtual flight experiences – including an immersive microsite, a branded Google Cardboard Virtual Reality app available on the Apple App Store and Android Play Store, and a simulator experience at Waterloo station. In this way, one piece of 360-degree marquee content enabled both distribution at scale and engagement in depth.

The campaign hashtag #HeresToPerfection was adopted by fans again this year to share broader Wimbledon experiences, and this allowed for easier content discovery over the course of the campaign.

Entire series 2014 & 2015 = 5m+ views to date

Rufus - The Real Hawk Eye: #7 in YouTube top 10 ads, June 2014

16,000 shares & 97% organic reach

Fly Like Rufus = 1st ever 360-degree pre-roll ad on YouTube

55% online share of voice among official Wimbledon partners

+756% increase in social mentions

“A brand I’d pay more for” = +22%

“Is sophisticated” = +25%