2015 Gold Best Use of Mobile

IBM have been making a key but unseen contribution to Wimbledon for 25 years, sending world-class, real-time data, statistics and insights to commentators, players, coaches and fans the world over. With its core decision-maker audience over-indexing as tennis fans, the company wanted to use this overlap to introduce its team earlier in their decision-making journey and improve perceptions and likelihood to consider.

By turning the role of its Data Capture team into a game, IBM reached its audience when they were in a fan mindset, and treated them to a compelling, unique and immersive taste of life behind the scenes of the sport.

The communications included a game, extensive online media, social activity and a partnership with The Telegraph. It set out to stimulate interest in IBM and act as a bridge from tennis to business content and continue that customer journey to generate quality engagement.

Creativity

Central to the creative was the IBM #MakeTheTeam game. This game gave a true taste of the role, skill and expertise of an IBM Data Capturer, with players challenged to use their smartphone or tablet to record backhands, forehands, faults, aces and whether the ball went cross-court or down the line, critically, with speed and accuracy. Through four game types, players had to keep up with the action (using footage from the IBM Wimbledon archive) and could challenge friends to play directly through Facebook.

Players competed on a dedicated IBM Wimbledon hub on The Telegraph website and at the IBM Kiosk at The Championships. For those at the top of the leaderboard, game prizes included Centre Court tickets for Wimbledon 2016 and for those playing the game in the IBM Kiosk there was an opportunity to win a VIP behind- the-scenes tour of the IBM Bunker at Wimbledon.

Results

The campaign was a huge success, attracting 1.3 million engagements across the campaign game, videos, articles and infographics. 44,736 game sessions gave a total 1255 hours of engagement – an average session time of 1 minute 41 seconds. A banner click-through rate of 22.4% for the game, almost six times higher than non-game banners within the campaign, validated the strategy.

Through The Telegraph, a pre/ post survey found that two- thirds of decision-makers who saw the activity engaged with campaign content, with 62% sharing it with others and a quarter going on to look for specific information on IBM. IBM consideration increased 13% for business analytics and 47% for cloud offerings, showing how the campaign pulled decision- makers down the funnel.