Melbourne has been the centre of attention in the sports world this past week and a half for the first tennis Grand Slam of the year: the Australian Open.
I had previously mentioned the application that had been developed for fans attending or watching the tournament – and would now like to go into more detail as I believe, like others, this ‘branded utility’ execution (if I can call it that) to be a very good one.
IBM has been a major technology partner of the various tennis Grand Slam tournaments since 1990. They operate the media infrastructure, and various technological innovations such as speed trackers, gameplay statistics and live score feeds. Last year at Wimbledon they debuted the IBM Seer augmented reality application – as a guide to the British Tennis Open at Wimbledon – operating on a T-Mobile G1 running Android. This was well received in trade blogs and press, but with Android being at such a young age in the market – it would not have made a large dent on the wider market of smart-phone users.
This year at the Australian Open IBM has taken a more egalitarian view to providing information and media, via mobile, by developing a more robust iPhone app for the event in addition to a mobile site and the Android-based Seer application. The vast majority of application and mobile web users (beyond the ‘walled garden’) in Australia come from iPhone – according to AdMob – as Android’s launch down under has been stunted by the big telecoms companies. In addition to this, Optus, the second-largest Australian-based telecoms company, was a tournament partner, but chose to leverage this through its own walled garden ‘Optus Zoo’ whose main point of interest to users it hoped was live streaming of matches to mobile. Unfortunately this was not available on all handsets, including the iPhone, which apparently accounts for 1 in 2 of all new Optus customers.
These three main mobile touchpoints created and branded by IBM are all similar, but built native to their environment. Most of my images focus on the iPhone, as that is what I used when I went to a Sunday night match (Henin vs Wickmayer and Roddick vs Rodriguez) to test-drive the experience.
Maps – getting around at events can be confusing for tourists – and the layered approach of the information made the maps less cluttered and easy to read.
News & match draws – these handy features gave me up-to-the-hour news updates on what was happening outside Rod Laver Arena and the ability to check the status of upcoming draws, and matches while wondering who would win the matches I was watching.
Live scores – Pictured in landscape mode, this came in quite handy with the Roddick/Rodriguez match that finished at around 2am. I went home at the end of the fourth set, at 1am, exhausted and acutely aware I needed to be up in 5 hours to go to work. However, I also wanted to know who won, so I used this feature to check the score a few times as I probably wouldn’t have got to sleep until I knew who won.
Media room - these two different features are merely aggregated feeds on a page. One a combination of twenty high-profile tennis stars own Twitter accounts (Andy Murray being a favourite at the moment) and the other being a live feed of photos out of the press room. Finally, the app streamed live commentary (AO Radio) from the courts that I could listen to through headphones without disturbing anyone next to me. Anti-social, sure. Great for the tennis nuts? Absolutely!
Promotion – Aside from promotion on the AustralianOpen.com website, the programs and at the event itself – the iPhone app was promoted through mobile banners promoting the application running on the mobile Fairfax newspaper sites, the example shown being m.smh.com.au which when clicked on led the user to the Apple AppStore. The application reached the featured apps page in the Australian AppStore store too which would have given it additional high awareness.
With all this, IBM was able to make an advertising campaign look like an added value service – something far more likely to create lasting ongoing engagement with their brand and what they are trying to make consumers understand their brand to be. It is a clever and authentic way to leverage a B2B client into a mainstream marketing activity.
The mobile website – m.australianopen.com – did not have the same usablity as the applications, however it had a similar amount of useful information which would have been high on the priority list for any visitor using a Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, etc. This included draws, scores, player profiles and news.
Finally, the IBM Seer application had an upgrade for the Australian Open, and is demonstrated below. I was unable to test it out for myself, but by all accounts the augmented reality layers are incredibly quick and easy to use. Unfortunately, even with affluent visitors to the tournament from Europe and the US more likely to own an Android device, these numbers would have paled in comparison to the number of iPhone owners.
Conclusion:
This is a terrific example of a ‘branded utility’. That is, a practical tool service or resource that ads value to an existing audience behaviour. In this case, IBM’s intended audience are affluent, early technology adopters – and in this instance IBM adds value to a lifestyle (sport) experience by demonstrating their understanding and scalability of large IT projects.
If you own an iPhone or iPod touch and plan to watch the tennis in Melbourne, or on TV, you should try the app (it is free) in the AppStore – iTunes link – or point your mobile to m.australianopen.com in time for the finals.
