The Go Buoy was successfully launched at the Rottnest Channel Swim on the 22nd of February 2014. We reached 100% of our target audience and thousands of swimmers heard motivational music and messages of support from our five advertisers over an approximate distance of 1.5km. Go Buoy also generated substantial earned media on radio, Twitter, Facebook and in print and sparked lots of great word-of-mouth from the swimmers themselves (see case study).

Creatively, we sought to encourage swimmers and build brand advocacy by talking to them at a unique time. From a media perspective, it became clear that the best time was, in fact, while the swimmers where in the water and approaching the end of what was a very grueling journey. This gave us the media idea of creating the world’s first ‘underwater radio station’ on which we sold broadcasting space to five major advertisers.

The Rottnest Channel Swim is a 19.7km journey from Cottesloe Beach to Rottnest Island. Every year event sponsors show their support for swimmers on shore. However, the swimmers can’t see or hear any of that support when they’re out in the open ocean.

While audio is traditionally used to broadcast messages via radio, television, or even public address systems, we recognised an opportunity to use audio underwater to communicate with our swimming target market.

So we came up with the idea of using an underwater speaker to play motivational songs for the swimmers. We decided to take a regular marker buoy and outfitted it with a fully functional, underwater broadcasting system. We called it the ‘Go Buoy’.