| As the world's most versatile camera, our goal is to enable incredibly engaging and immersive content. Staying competitive and innovative in our content creation was paramount in 2015 so we teamed up with our friends at Facebook as an exclusive spherical partner for the launch of 360-degree videos for News Feed. It was epic. Our mission with VR content on Facebook is to stoke out our audience with a variety of never-before-seen, immersive experiences from the vantage point of GoPro world-class athletes, top chefs and more. We tell stories that stir emotions and we're changing the way consumers experience and share life's most important moments. With more than four billion videos viewed daily on Facebook, we had an opportunity to bring the excitement of 360-degree video to a vast new audience. Spherical video is an incredible way for GoPro to bring people into new worlds and experiences like never before. |
We released four spherical videos that spoke to a mix of our heritage and lifestyle verticals: Moto VR with Ronnie Renner, Ski VR with Chris Davenport and Olympian Julia Mancuso, Surf VR with Anthony Walsh and Matahi Drollet and Chef VR with Executive Chef and Owner Joshua Skenes of SAISON in San Francisco.
All of which generated a combined 25 million views and engagements.
Most remarkable was our November release of Tahiti Surf VR, which brought us inside some of the biggest barrels the world has ever seen. Our Tahiti Surf VR generated 13M views in 1 week (insane!) and is GoPro's most viewed Facebook video of all-time. We had a little help thanks to our buddy Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer who amplified our reach by giving us props and sharing their excitement on their Facebook pages (combined they reach over 60 million).
As Facebook continues to evolve and the News Feed becomes fiercely competitive, it's critical for us to find new ways to connect with our audience and grow. Identifying and capitalizing on strategic channel partnerships enable us to stay on top of our game and above all else, continue to tell beautiful stories from around the world.
Facebook releasing a spherical platform is an exciting step in the lifeline of VR that will bring totally immersive GoPro content to the masses. We knew that our spherical content would break barriers and become the new status quo for pushing boundaries.
In order to go big we leveraged our incredible roster of athletes so we tapped sports legend Ronnie Renner and created a high-energy motocross excursion across the Idaho desert, a video that reached 17 million and drove 2.3 million views. Then we took to the mountains and tag-teamed our next VR piece with the insane ski duo of Chris Davenport and Julia Mancuso who took to the backcountry of P backcountry of Portillo, Chile. We capped off the year with our Tahiti VR which continues to amass views and seriously captivate our audience.
Our spherical work, and specifically the Tahiti Surf VR is not only one the most remarkable pieces of surf content that we've ever created, but it sets the stage for action content within the spherical / VR world.
In total, our 360-degree Facebook videos had a reach of 58 million, accumulated 8.7 million video views, over 3 million engagements.
And we're just getting started.
