PyeongChang, home of the 2018 Winter Olympics, is 8,400km from Plze?, Czech Republic. To overcome this distance, we used the latest VR technology, creating an immersive tour of the beautiful brewery. We wanted to push the boundaries of what is possible with VR technology by blending live action video with 3D modelled content and animation to produce a virtual tour like no other.

From a narrative perspective, the idea was to capture the genuine warmth of the people who work at the brewery, and take people around areas that are usually off-limits, connecting audiences with the craftsmen as they perform their work; something not possible on a real tour. This really drums home the uniqueness of Pilsner Urquell. Additionally, through a creative use of storytelling techniques, we wanted to wrap other elements of the brand story – like the hops harvest – into a cohesive and beautiful experience.

Audiences use VR headsets to experience a hyper-real brewery tour in 180? live action video. From the chilly lagering tunnels where you can see the steam on our Brewmaster’s breath to the 4,000-litre barrels that roll towards you, this is a brewery tour like no other. Users engage with real craftsmen, while CGI and animations offer an ‘under the bonnet’ glimpse of life at the brewery.

We filmed using VR180 – a new immersive video format from Google – blended with 3D modelled content and animations, plus a narrower VR60 lenses to push the pixel density and image sharpness. In the final scene, when the Head Tapster puts a perfectly poured virtual glass of Pilsner Urquell in front of the user, it triggers a Pavlov reflex. Luckily, audiences emerge from a virtual world to find the same Head Tapster standing behind the bar to serve them a real beer.

Over 17 days, we delivered over 1,000 virtual brewery tours. The experience drove beer sales, resulting in 33,000 perfectly poured beers enjoyed at the Czech House during PyeongChang 2018 – that’s around 2,000 pints of beer a day. Visitors to Czech House not only came away with a powerful sense of the brand story and the craft values that Pilsner Urquell stands for, but also a taste for Czech beer and some incredible memories of their ‘trip’ to the brewery in Plze?. In addition, we succeeded in building brand awareness among Koreans unable to make it to the Olympics, as the event generated 38 articles in the local media, with 257,681 impressions, equivalent to ?129 million (€110,ooo euros) in earned media value.