The Brief

To engage consumers and improve brand measures around innovation, Kia wanted to leverage their Australian Open tennis sponsorship. They wanted to shift passive viewing to active brand engagement. Ideally we wanted to give viewers at home a Nintendo Wii-style interactive experience – turning players’ mobile phones into virtual tennis racquets; syncing with the TV broadcast and bringing the tennis action. We wanted them to physically feel the power with which professional players hit the ball. However, to complement the ad campaign the technology solution would need to provide a seamless user experience and work across ANY screen - TV, laptop, tablet, digital outdoor screens, even in massive and crowded public event spaces. With smartphone penetration in Australia over 80%, we knew they played a critical role but a mere USD$250k budget allocated to create a world first technology was a tough ask. Industry experts from multiple agencies and media companies said it wasn't possible. Our 3 person development team spent three months developing many prototypes and refining the technology before it launched in January 2014 to the public.

We conceived and developed this technology to create expanded and synchronised experiences between an audio-visual execution and the user’s personal smartphone. We combined a unique set of smartphone functionalities to make this possible: • Audio syncing technology (similar to Shazam) to calibrate the app, to alert the phone to the forthcoming serve • Phone timer to measure whether a swing is too early or too late • Gyroscope to measure racquet positioning • Accelerometer to measure power; swing too softly and the return wouldn’t clear the net, too hard and it is out of court Our technology ‘listens’ to watermark audio delivered via any nearby audio source (television, radio, tablets, computers or digital outdoor) and synchronises the application with the broadcast. These technologies allowed viewers to return of serve directly with the broadcast, letting them know how they performed within half a millisecond! Game On is a completely new innovation, never done before in the world as proven by our patent. It was originally created for Kia however we own the global patent in 147 countries and territories. Game On has already been used in a subsequent World Cup App (viewers save the goals), and is soon to be rolled out for horse racing, cricket (locally and in India) and baseball in USA plus a reality TV series where the viewer competes against the players on screen.

Game On has became the benchmark for second-screen interactive campaigns, already scaling globally. By end of 2014 it will have been incorporated into games played more than 10 million times! Results from Kia: 193,000 downloads put us at top of charts. For the two weeks it beat Candy Crush, Clash of the Clans and Angry Birds. Australia’s leading TV network declared it 'set the standard for second-screen TV engagement' and technology websites lauded the innovation, commenting: • “Innovative technology served at a perfect place and time” – Bannerblog.co.uk • “Engaging and Creative” - MobileMarketer.com • “10/10” – Gamespot Even Toyota’s agency was amazed, featuring Game On in their blog, labelling it “a great campaign to strengthen Kia’s association with tennis”. Quite a compliment! The App also generated very positive impact for the brand - 79% of players more positive about Kia and associated Kia with “Innovation”. World Cup results are still rolling in, but in line with tennis, and regarded as the most innovative engagement for any World Cup sponsor! The successful implementation and execution of our technology solution offers global brands an opportunity to combine fun, contextual relevance and technology to truly engage their audiences using smartphones.