Innovation in the wind tunnel: How we created this year's Christmas radio advert

Let’s face it, conveying the sheer exhilaration of Indoor Skydiving via photo or video isn’t the toughest of challenges. Sure, there’s a whole bunch of things to get right; great lighting, a wide smile, rippling skin, a thumbs up and of course a subject soaring gracefully above the cable net floor. Nail those, and it’s safe to say the viewer will know that a visit to iFLY is fun, fun, fun!

But what happens when your medium is sound only? A radio advert has to strip away those essential visuals, presenting an entirely new challenge - to capture & convey the euphoria, the freedom and the adrenaline rush of indoor skydiving, including our latest range of Virtual Reality Experiences, through audio only. Not so easy.

Here’s how we went about it for this year’s Christmas radio advert.

The start point was to do away with the traditional sterile confines of a recording studio or employ the services of a voice artist who’d never actually experienced the freefall buzz!

Instead, Ollie & Si at Touch FM came up with a much better approach. When they pitched it to us, we took the decision to run (or should we say ‘fly’) with it, without knowing what the end result would be.

So, one chilly Monday morning, Ollie & Si plucked the bare essentials from their recording studio, chucked them in a van and set off for iFLY Milton Keynes, throwing the radio ad rulebook out of the window en-route. When they reached us, they leapt enthusiastically into our 120mph airflow and recorded (possibly) the highest-velocity voiceover ever.  

The end result is, we think, a genuine, visceral audible representation of what Indoor Skydiving and our latest VR technology feels like to our guests - and with not an image in sight.

Listen to the ad here.

Follow Ollie & Si here: https://www.facebook.com/OllieSi/

Listen out for iFLYs Christmas 2018 radio ad on: Capital FM - Manchester / Heart Four Counties / Heart Thames Valley / The Breeze Basingstoke / The Breeze Reading.