Performance Zone

Parcel delivery giants FedEx sponsor the ATP tour, the circuit for the world's elite players in men's tennis. Their London PR agency, Good Relations, challenged us to create a game that would raise brand awareness and drive extra traffic to their online Performance Zone – where top players' stats are compared across eras, surfaces, head-to-head match-ups and more.

Our idea was inspired by the popular Guitar Hero game. As a player, you are presented with three lanes, each with a tennis ball travelling speedily towards you. The trick is to hit the ball exactly when it enters the performance zone. Just as in the real game of tennis, players are rewarded for their reactive time and accuracy. Success earns points that can be converted into big prizes – for instance, court-side tickets for the ATP Finals.

With three brands to incorporate (FedEx, ATP and Performance Zone), the design stage was trickier than returning a Novak Djokovic serve. But we created some mock-ups Good Relations and the various stakeholders were happy with. Then the Trunk Creative Technology team got to work and created the game itself.

We decide to develop and host two different games: one for internal use, and the other for the public.

There were 2,547 competition entries and the consumer version of the game was played 50,405 times. Not bad considering it was only available for a brief 10-day period. Better still, the average playing time was around two minutes, so it was "Advantage FedEx". The Good Relations people were so happy they invited us to the ATP Final!