GoPro Goes on the Air
Consumers Become the Directors of HERO Commercials
By: Jason Giacchino
ATV Connection’s editors are big fans of technology. After all, goodies like cell phones, GPS, and affordable helmet cams were the stuff of dreams just a few short years ago. And speaking of helmet cams, GoPro, the world’s best selling wearable HD camera company, is celebrating the success of its world famous HD HERO line of wearable and gear mountable action-sports cameras by launching a national TV campaign comprised of 16 action sports commercials, nearly all of which are generated by consumers.
The commercials, shot entirely with the HD HERO camera (which sells for 9-9 in retail stores including Best Buy, REI, and Cycle Gear as well as online at GoPro.com) will be broken up into 30 individual spots. The 30 spots will feature GoPro customers enjoying a wide variety of sports we off-roaders understand from skiing to snowboarding, surfing to race car driving and were shot by the customers, themselves (we’re hoping a few ATV segments make the grade as well).
GoPro’s television commercials represent a milestone in consumer-generated content and at the same time demonstrate the professional broadcast quality of GoPro HD HERO cameras.
“The most exciting thing about GoPro’s national TV campaign is that the quality of the commercials is so incredible, so professional,” says Nicholas Woodman, GoPro’s founder and CEO. “That 13 of the 16 commercials were shot by our customers, using the same HD HERO camera you can buy for 9, is incredible…nobody has ever seen consumer generated content like this on TV before.”
Since the first HD HERO camera was launched in November of 2009, GoPro has seen an explosion in the amount of high quality HD content created from customers. Every few minutes, customers around the world upload videos titled or tagged “GoPro” to YouTube and even more GoPro videos are posted without mention of the GoPro name. More customer videos are posted daily to the GoPro’s Facebook page at Facebook.com/GoProCamera where roughly 1,000 people a day “Like” GoPro’s fan page as a result of the engaging, international content.
“Given the amount of high quality content our customers are creating with their GoPro cameras, we just had to make these commercials,” exclaims Woodman. “These commercials are a celebration of our customers, our cameras, and our excitement about GoPro’s rise as one of the world’s most innovative camera companies.”
To further celebrate its national television campaign, GoPro is giving away one of every product they make to one lucky winner, daily. The promotion appears at the end of each television commercial and visitors to http://www.gopro.com/ can enter daily, no purchase necessary.
Do you have any experience with a GoPro camera? Discuss it here!