Changing gears on immersive experiences with Zwift
Gameplay meets exercise in Zwift’s newest campaign aimed at amateur and enthusiast cyclists alike around the world. Connecting cyclists and triathletes from the comfort of their homes, Zwift mixes the intensity of training with the immersive and engaging play of gaming. The Long Beach based brand has been dubbed as one of the top 10 most innovative sport companies of 2021 and continues to boost brand awareness for its innovative gameplay model worldwide.
Their newest campaign was launched across global TV networks, in digital, social and print, during the annual cycling race Tour De France, encapsulating the brand’s fast-paced game play immersion.
The global campaign amps up Zwift’s tagline ‘Fun is Fast’ and features world renowned champion cyclists Mathieu van der Poel, Geraint Thomas, Anna Van der Breggen and Justin Williams from the cycling team L39ion of Los Angeles.
The fitness brand partnered with The Mill to produce and direct the spot, which is the first in an ongoing creative partnership between The Mill and Zwift to produce a series of campaign components throughout the course of 2021 across broadcast, digital, social and print media. This is the brand’s largest integrated campaign to date, kicking off with the Tour De France broadcast, with additional campaign elements set to launch later this year.
“The Fun is Fast campaign is our marquee advertising campaign launched during the world’s largest annual cycling event, the Tour de France. The campaign theme, which The Mill helped bring to life, focuses on finding your fun, celebrating the different types of activities you can find on Zwift and the breadth of our target audience.”
“Zwift came to us wanting to create a multi-faceted campaign that raised their brand awareness and really echoed their innovation as a future-facing company. Together we worked shoulder to shoulder with Zwift’s marketing and in-house creative team to conceptualize and produce a full scale broadcast, digital, social and print campaign for 70 markets in 6 languages. This partnership offered an exciting opportunity for The Mill to embrace its direct-to-brand offering, and manage end-to-end production involving a multinational live action shoot and extensive large scale VFX production to create over 150 broadcast and digital assets.
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To translate the Zwift experience, Director David Lawson took the unique approach to shoot live-action cyclists on a grey screen, incorporating dynamic camera movements to keep the energy flowing between the two environments. David explains, “To capture the depth and immersiveness of the game we took the unconventional approach to integrate a live-action person into a CG environment. This technique allowed us to fully surround the rider with the game’s graphics in post production, making it feel more digestible and cohesive.”
Geraint Thomas on set for Zwift
David continues “To ramp up the energy of the spot and create a certain flow, we delicately mapped out our camera movements to seamlessly transition between various scenes and riders. We worked hand in hand with the Zwift team to decide what exactly we wanted to capture. These movements were even more crucial to map out when we factor in that we were shooting similar scenes in both Los Angeles and Amsterdam that had to be matched exactly.”
The global campaign amps up Zwift’s tagline ‘Fun is Fast’ and features world renowned cyclists Mathieu van der Poel, Geraint Thomas, and the cycling team L39ion of Los Angeles.
David adds, “It was exciting to collaborate with all these different riders with different backgrounds and experience levels on set. From amateurs, to mid-level cyclists, and world famous athletes, we had a full cast to show the accessibility of the Zwift product. That is the goal throughout this entire campaign, to showcase that anyone can use Zwift.”
“Jon Hall, Zwift Advertising Director comments “we are very happy with the technical advancements that we have incorporated in this new campaign. They have allowed us to translate on screen the immersive and social game experience of Zwift.
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