The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), the US governing body for female golfers which runs the LPGA Tour, teamed up with agency Accenture Song (in collaboration with partner Early Spring) on an immersive virtual initiative exploring the intense pressures on women golfers called ‘In Her Head’.
The project initially seems to be an immersive, virtual reality putting challenge called ‘Putt Like A Lady’, but this virtual reality game quickly turns into a darker, more surreal experiential installation called ‘In Her Head’ which highlights the intense pressure that female golfers place on the tour.
The initiative’s objective was to change the way fans think about what it’s is genuinely like to ‘putt like a lady’ and to bring to life the fact that women in the sport battle multiple challenges – not just their own skills and form, or their competitors and the course itself, but also a world where female sports stars only receive a tiny slice of sports sponsorship revenue, ticket sales and TV money and yet still have to pay for agencies, travel costs, equipment, coaching and, of course, living.
Premiering in April as a VR experience at The Chevron Championship (the first women’s golf major of the season), fans and tournament attendees were invited to don a set of VR Goggles to play a simple game with the condescending name ‘Putt Like a Lady’ – which initially looked like a standard putting challenge based on a virtual twin of the tournament’s 16th hole.
It begins with a promising, overly optimistic physical and digital entryway adorned with suspended clouds, elevator music and AI generated posters of inspirational messaging.
But soon the virtual golf ball transforms into an eyeball staring up at the player while the hole expands into a gaping and growing black hole which swallows the ball and then the player – leaving the participant in darkness and forced to contemplate the intensity of the daily pressures faced LPGA players.
Surrounded by a sonic spatial audio landscape with CNC course fabrication and pulsing, colour-changing LED lights, plus olfactory smells of freshly cut grass evolving to a metallic, unfamiliar scent, players are faced with a mix of player insights, video memories and representations of their daily challenges. To make the putt, players have to combat red eye flight tickets, financial worries and an even an insomnia eyeball boss in a fever dream style environment. Thus the high resolution experience simulates the conscious competitive pressures and subconscious financial and mental health pressures imposed on LPGA tour athletes.
When fans and guest players complete the experience and remove their headsets, the lighting in the room has been changed to match the challenging and profound mood and sentiment of the experience they have just completed. Following a moment of decompression, they are then lead into a final gallery exhibition honouring and celebrating the LPGA heroes whose stories and perspectives they have just experienced for themselves.
The initiative blends Unreal Engine 5 with enhanced gaming hand controllers and extended golf club grips attached to the Meta Quest 2 controller, plus a Meta Quest 2 headset linked to gaming PC.
The project, which was built on research into the real life stories of 60 female professional golfers who were carefully interviewed for the initiative, continued to pop-up at 2023 LPGA and PGA Tour events.
“Empathy is one of the strongest ways to help change someone’s point of view,” said Accenture Song Chief Creative Officer Of Brand for North America Jason Kreher who led the agency’s project team. “For this project it wasn’t enough to tell people that the pressures unique to female athletes are insane … we needed them to feel it. Immersive experiences are cool, but this one was an incredibly effective way to tell this story.”
Accenture Song Creative Sollin Sæle added: “Those who joined this thinking they could beat some of the best female athletes in the world were visibly less confident when walking out. It was moving to feel the tone shift as people walked in, thinking it was a fun game, only to emerge with their minds changed.”
“The ‘In Her Head’ experience was a triumphant and innovative success that showcased the constant and daily challenges in the world of professional women golfers, in front of an active audience at one of the LPGA Tour’s most prestigious major championships,” commented LPGA’s EVP of Global Media Distribution and Partnerships Brian Carroll. “The immersive activation was one-of-a-kind in launching our partnership with Accenture, and we hope spectators walked away with a newfound perspective as it pertains to the trials and tribulations in succeeding in the highest levels of sport.”
The campaign was created for the client The LPGA by a team at Accenture Song (the marketing, media and production arm of Accenture), with experiential designers Early Spring and fabrication from Cinco Made. Of the combined team that worked on the project, 50% self-identified as female.
The team at the LPGA which developed the initial brief included Media Manager Brian Carroll, Marketing Manager TJ Goco, Communications Manager Megan McGuire and the Commissioner Mollie Marcoux.
The initiative was conceived, created and produced by a group at agency Accenture Song which included
Chief Creative Officer Jason Kreher, Art Directors Ragen Fykes and Sollin Saele, Design Director Mike Weihs, Designers Dara Neubauer, Emma Cochrane and Sam Carpenter, Creative Technologist Grant Thomas, Executive Producer Justin Durazzo, Producer Lisa Calgaro, Brand Director Amber Browning Higgins, Account Director Crystal Chan, Account Manager Keegan Mcmanus, plus Business Affairs Manager Aynsley Starbuck. The production team at the agency included
Creative Technologist Roberto Perez, Producer Cristina Maristany, Sound Tech/Editor Giacomo Garoffolo, 3D Artists Eduardo Oliden Hermida and Luigi Russo, Designer Fahran Qureshi and Guillaume Carre, Tech Lead Bobby Fata, Producer Troy Landry, Rachel Scarpelli and Nattallie Schiavo and Photographer Paul McGeiver.
Additional development and production came from a team at Early Spring which included Creative Director Kamil Tyebally, Designer Trinity Montgomery, Producers Carmen Mouynes and Monica Brouwer and Lighting Tech William Kennedy.
Comment
Most VR sports event experiences are fairly vanilla these days, but this is an interesting, somewhat surreal project that subverts expectations and is all the more ambitious and memorable because of it.
A bold project which adds a fresh perspective on the pressure, stress and mental wellbeing in sports generally and for women in particular.
This innovative, unsettling and somewhat existential initiative has been shortlisted for a ‘Tribeca X’ award.
While the majority of male golfers earn enough through a single season’s earnings and endorsements to cover their full annual expenses and live comfortably, the same can’t be said for the majority of female golfers. While the men on the PGA Tour compete for $450m in prize money, the women on the LPGA compete for a total tour purse of around $100m. A fair number of these female players even struggling to pay basic living expenses for the love of their sport.
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