Bubba Watson's Jetpack Puts Oakley on the Olympic Fairway
Golfdigest.clapboard.com/archive/oakley-jetpack-fashion-2">Oakley's Bubba's Jetpack is a July 2016 US digital campaign created with agency Thinkmodo, starring two-time Masters champion and 2016 US Olympic golf team member Bubba Watson piloting the BW-Air experimental jetpack aircraft to promote Oakley sports apparel and PRIZM sports sunglasses ahead of golf's return to the Summer Olympics, according to Clubandresortbusiness.
The campaign arrived at a moment of genuine historical weight for the sport. Golf had been absent from the Olympic programme for 112 years before its reinstatement at the 2016 Rio Games, and Oakley chose that milestone as the creative platform for a spectacle designed to cut through the noise of a crowded summer sports calendar, according to LinkedIn. Rather than producing a conventional athlete endorsement film, the brand commissioned something closer to an aviation event: Watson seated in the BW-Air, a flying golf-cart jetpack concept developed by Martin Aircraft, traversing a golf course from the air, according to Mashable. The vehicle was capable of reaching approximately 46 mph and altitudes of up to 3,000 feet, according to reporting by Club and Resort Business and Golf Digest.
In the United States, the campaign functioned as a digital-first activation, anchored by a single hero video asset designed to generate organic sharing across social and sports media channels. The strategic logic was clear: pair an instantly recognisable professional golfer with a genuinely extraordinary piece of technology, and let the spectacle earn its own distribution. The BW-Air itself carried a reported starting price of $200,000, with availability projected for December 2017, details confirmed by Club and Resort Business. The Clapboard Score for Bubba's Jetpack stands at 73 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and cultural timing against a limited media footprint.
Oakley recognised a rare convergence of cultural moments in the summer of 2016. Golf's re-entry into the Olympic Games represented not merely a scheduling fact but an opportunity to reframe the sport for a broader, younger audience in the United States — and to position Oakley's performance eyewear and apparel at the centre of that reframing. The BW-Air jetpack campaign was the brand's answer to a strategic question: how do you make sunglasses feel essential when the story itself demands to be watched?
The creative lineage behind this approach was deliberate. Thinkmodo had previously collaborated with Bubba Watson and Oakley in 2013 to produce a golf cart hovercraft — a campaign that established Watson's persona as a golfer willing to push boundaries beyond the conventional fairway. As James Percelay, Thinkmodo co-founder and creative lead, explained to Club and Resort Business in July 2016: "Three years ago, Bubba and Oakley teamed up to create the world's first Golf Cart Hovercraft. For 2016, we wanted to make history once again by taking innovation and performance to the next level." That continuity gave the 2016 campaign a built-in narrative — it was not a one-off stunt but the second chapter of an ongoing technological mythology around Watson's identity as a golfer.
The sports eyewear sector in the United States sits within a competitive global landscape that includes established rivals such as Ray-Ban and Maui Jim, according to market research sources. Oakley's strategic differentiator has consistently been performance credibility reinforced by athlete authenticity, and the BW-Air campaign extended that positioning into entertainment territory where product demonstration and spectacle become indistinguishable.
The BW-Air is the creative centrepiece of Bubba's Jetpack. The aircraft, developed by Martin Aircraft, is powered by an approximately 200 to 210 horsepower rotary engine driving two large fans, with a reported top speed of 46 mph and a maximum operational altitude of up to 3,000 feet, as documented by Club and Resort Business and Golf Digest. The vehicle is designed to carry a single pilot — in this case Watson — in what amounts to a motorised airborne golf cart, a concept that sits at the intersection of extreme sports engineering and absurdist golf culture.
On screen, Watson is seen piloting the BW-Air across a golf course, the machine lifting him above the terrain while he remains dressed in Oakley apparel and eyewear. The visual proposition is deliberately theatrical: a professional golfer in competition-ready kit operating an aircraft that most viewers would associate with science fiction rather than a Saturday morning round. The juxtaposition of the familiar cadence of golf with the kinetic energy of personal flight is the creative engine of the piece.
James Percelay, Thinkmodo co-founder, described the acoustic engineering of the BW-Air in remarks reported by Adweek, noting it is "quiet — in a relative sense thanks to a piston-less rotary engine that runs at about 90 db." That detail underscores the degree to which Thinkmodo and the production team engaged with the mechanical reality of the vehicle rather than simply treating it as a prop. The campaign was produced as a single hero digital asset, and Percelay served as the named creative lead on the project. Full production credits beyond Thinkmodo's involvement are not publicly documented across available sources.
No fully verified third-party performance audit of Bubba's Jetpack is publicly available. The campaign did not enter a named awards competition with documented results, and no independent media-spend or reach figures have been released by Oakley or Thinkmodo. However, the structural conditions for strong earned media performance were firmly in place.
The campaign launched in July 2016 at the precise moment when international sports media attention was concentrated on the United States Olympic team's preparation for Rio. Bubba Watson's status as a two-time Masters champion and confirmed member of the 2016 US Olympic golf team, as reported by Golf Digest and Club and Resort Business, gave every piece of coverage a double news peg: Olympic golf and experimental aviation. The BW-Air's reported $200,000 price point and projected December 2017 availability — details confirmed by Club and Resort Business — added a commercial dimension that extended the story beyond advertising trade coverage into consumer technology and sports lifestyle media.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates effective use of a single high-impact asset: one video, one talent, one vehicle, one occasion. That economy of means is consistent with digital campaigns designed for algorithmic amplification rather than paid broadcast reach. In the United States, where golf audiences skew toward premium consumers with high media engagement, the choice to anchor the activation to an Olympic narrative maximised contextual relevance without requiring a complex multi-channel media buy. The Clapboard Score of 73 out of 100 reflects this balance — a campaign with genuine creative distinction and smart cultural timing, constrained by its single-asset scope.
Bubba's Jetpack is a July 2016 US digital campaign by Oakley and agency Thinkmodo. It stars professional golfer Bubba Watson piloting the BW-Air, an experimental jetpack aircraft developed by Martin Aircraft, to promote Oakley's PRIZM sunglasses and sports apparel ahead of golf's return to the Summer Olympics.
Thinkmodo created Bubba's Jetpack for Oakley in 2016. James Percelay, Thinkmodo's co-founder and creative lead, directed the campaign concept, building on a prior collaboration with Watson and Oakley that produced the world's first golf cart hovercraft in 2013, as reported by Club and Resort Business.
The BW-Air is an experimental flying golf-cart aircraft developed by Martin Aircraft. It is powered by an approximately 200 to 210 horsepower rotary engine, reaches speeds of around 46 mph, and can ascend to altitudes of up to 3,000 feet, according to Club and Resort Business and Golf Digest.
Oakley launched Bubba's Jetpack to celebrate golf's reinstatement in the Summer Olympics after a 112-year absence and to promote its PRIZM sunglasses and apparel. The campaign used Watson's identity as a 2016 US Olympic golf team member to give the digital activation a strong cultural and sporting news peg.
Bubba Watson served as the campaign's sole on-screen talent, piloting the BW-Air aircraft across a golf course in full Oakley kit. As a two-time Masters champion and member of the 2016 US Olympic golf team, as reported by Golf Digest, Watson provided both athletic credibility and mainstream sports media appeal.
Bubba's Jetpack follows a 2013 Oakley and Thinkmodo collaboration featuring the world's first golf cart hovercraft, branded Bubba's Hover. James Percelay of Thinkmodo told Club and Resort Business that the 2016 campaign was designed to surpass that benchmark by enabling Watson to fly across the golf course rather than simply traverse it.
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