Aviva Launch ‘World First’ Fan Experience Experience Aviva Stadium Through The Eyes of a World Class Player!

13th August 2010: Aviva has today launched the Aviva Stadium 3D Experience, the world’s first virtual 3D personal fan experience. Fans who enter the Experience will take on the role of a player who has been plucked from obscurity and called up to play for Ireland. They will take a 3D virtual tour and live the life of either a football or rugby player on matchday.

The Aviva Stadium 3D Experience allows the user to experience the tension and excitement ahead of an international soccer or rugby match in the first person, with their name and picture featured during the film.

The journey begins with the participant as a relatively unknown player, who on the day before a big international match gets a call up to play for Ireland. Throughout the journey they will travel to Aviva Stadium on the team bus, meet the physio for a personal briefing and get a pep talk in the dressing room from either Declan Kidney or Giovanni Trapattoni. The participant will also interact virtually with sporting commentators George Hook and Packie Bonner, rugby heroes Rob Kearney and Donncha O’ Callaghan and soccer stars Liam Lawrence and Keith Andrews.

The Experience squeezes all the thrills of the 24 hours before the match whistle into a unique five-minute 3D journey, and reaches a dramatic conclusion when the participant runs onto the pitch at a packed Aviva Stadium. The content is all shot in POV (point of view) 3D, and delivered on personal 24-inch 3D video screens inside the giant yellow Aviva machine. It is housed in a ‘Formula 1’ style customer experience unit and will be at Aviva Stadium on match days as well as attending major events and festivals around Ireland.

Based on the concept of recognising the unique events in the life of an international squad player in the run up to a big game, Aviva commissioned Verve Arena to build the Aviva Stadium 3D Experience project. Completion of the project included enlisting Ireland squad players and managers, casting hundreds of ardent supporters for filming crowd scenes in Aviva Stadium and a digital marketing specialist to deliver the personalisation software as well as hiring a filmmaker to create the film and a custom trailer engineer to build the unit.

Commenting on the Aviva Stadium 3D Experience, Alan Tyrrell from Aviva said: “This is about recognising the thrill, pressure and passion of being called up to represent Ireland at national team level. Most of us will never experience the thrill of arriving on the team bus on match day, the tension and excitement in the Irish dressing room and that great moment of running onto the Aviva Stadium pitch in front of 50,000 fans. The Aviva Experience allows us to give fans all over Ireland an opportunity to be part of sporting history.”

Ronan Traynor of Verve Arena highlights that this is a big step forward in experiential marketing in Ireland, with the 3D element playing a major part. “3D is very much the next big thing, and is a first for Ireland from a visual perspective. Following this unique and innovative brief from Aviva, we spent a number of months developing this concept. We see the world in three dimensions, so in many ways the shift from 2D to 3D is as significant as the move from black and white to colour.

“This represents a real leap forward and Aviva’s vision in embracing this type of technology to create such a unique brand experience. Creating 3D personalised video has never been done before.”