To market its new watercraft, the Explorer Pro, Sea-Doo partnered with National Geographic CreativeWorks and Atlanta-based content studio Bark Bark to produce a custom campaign, “Powered by Water.” The campaign's centerpiece is the above original brand film following National Geographic Explorer and researcher, Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, as she and her team take a deep dive into the origins of life on Earth to help us better understand what we can do to preserve it.

The partnership delivered on the brand's objective to uniquely position the Explorer Pro in an unexpected way and showcase the adventure of riding a Sea-Doo. Riding a pair of Explorer Pros, Espinoza and PhD student Lauren Hart traversed hard-to-reach locations on Lake Huron to collect water samples as part of a global research project studying a rare type of cyanobacteria that's believed to have played a pivotal role in the formation of our planet's atmosphere.

The campaign's custom promos and stories premiered across National Geographic's Instagram, Facebook and YouTube channels to drive engagement with a branded article on Nat Geo's website, “Diving for Microbial Time Capsules of Ancient Earth,” where audiences could read the full story and watch the film.

As a result of the collaboration, scientists are one step closer to understanding the chemical makeup of purple cyanobacteria as well as the implications these organisms have on the ecosystem. The ultimate goal of the project is to determine if these cyanobacteria are toxic, or if they could unlock new discoveries in medicine or have beneficial effects on our environment.