Final Celebration
So it’s all over, after 16 months graft we’re all done in South Africa - the last get out finishes today and the remaining team fly home tonight. But boy did we go out with a bang…
Working with local agency VWV we produced a one off Final Celebration for 600 of Castrol’s most important global customers. Held outside at Witwatersrand University we put up a huge clear skinned structure, leaving the front wall open and facing the Great Hall.
The building then became our canvas for the evening as we told the Castrol Performance story over four chapters featuring Live Performance, foot ballling insight (From Wenger, Cafu, Desailly and Bailey no less), speeches, fireworks and an array of different projection mapping techniques.
Highlights for me included our homage to GTX (check the oil travelling around the building just like that advert), the troupe of 100 gumboot dancers and the cast bow which had me in tears.
One of the most complex and involved jobs we’ve ever delivered and one that damn near killed us - but what an end result.
Many thanks to Watchout Op extraordinaire Brad for the pictures.
Tough life for the Cape Town team, their production office looks right out onto Table Mountain which is being lit at night for the duration of the World Cup…
We’ve just finished the build of the 2nd Castrol Performance Lab and it’s looking good. Gutted I’m not going to get he chance to see it.
As well as World Cup madness we’ve been busy on a number of other projects that will roll out over the summer in the UK. The first of these is for HTC in support of their cycling team HTC-Columbia. 
In line with their Quietly Brilliant positioning we’ve created a trailer that allows fans to charge their mobile phones by pedaling one of three official race bikes attached to a generator. As well as charging their phone visitors can also see their power output and compare it to a range of household appliances (up to 300 Watts) and the HTC Columbia cyclists (up to 1500 Watts in a sprint) this emphases how little energy (5 watts) the HTC phones require to take a charge.
Another quietly brilliant touch point is the periscopes given out to fans at each event, allowing them to view the race even if they aren’t in the front row and helping HTC to raise their profile amongst cycling fans.
The trailer had it’s first outing on Saturday at the 
We made it to the Brazil v North Korea game on Tuesday night, made extra special by the fact that Ellie on our team is Brazilian (you can see how excited she is in the picture above).
Meanwhile Trine and Matt managed to find someone wearing one of our Makarapas - nice to see them out and about in the wild.
For the Castrol hospitality area at Soccer City we’ve created the Football Lodge, a space that mixes football and traditional craft skills.
As part of the build we commissioned a Cape Town based township collective to make 600 Castrol makarapas - the hand cut and painted hard hats worn by the most fanatical local fans.
The hats took a team of 11 (shown above) three months to make, each one is slightly different and we’re delighted with the end result.
Here they are on display at the entrance to the football lodge. At the end of the game our guests get to take them home as a memento of their experience.
Another South African football tradition we’ve managed to incorporate is the Vuvuzella (the very loud horn blown with alarming frequency at each and every game), in the Football Lodge they’ve been repurposed as chandeliers.
We managed to get a few tickets for the first England game at Rustenburg, a fantastic night out, all be it with a disappointing result. Guy looks a little overwhelmed with the whole experience while Mark shows off the tan gained from many hours spent supervising the build of one of our outdoor installations.
Here’s Arsene Wenger playing Mindball at the Castrol Performance Lab. 
The players wear headbands with electrodes which are connected to the table. The electrodes are wired up to a biosensor system that measures electrical activity in the brain.
The goal is to be more relaxed than your opponent and thus move a physical ball away from you into your opponent’s goal.