Creating websites, apps and a new cricket league

by Marketing ON 13 February 2013

Campaign: KFC T20 Big Bash League websites and app

Client: Cricket Australia

Agency: Reactive

Platform: Sitecore

Background

After a hotly-contested pitch, Reactive won the digital account for Cricket Australia’s new KFC T20 Big Bash League in 2011. The initial project involved creating the league website and eight team sites all on a single Sitecore content management system (CMS) implementation. The nine sites have since clocked up jaw-dropping numbers, with site traffic exceeding expectations.

Since the launch in July 2011, more than eight million page views have been recorded across the league and team sites, with the average fan spending six minutes per visit on the Big Bash League website during the season.

After seeing significant growth in site traffic and interest after the launch of the new league, in December 2011 Cricket Australia and Reactive followed up with the launch of Android and iPhone apps for the KFC T20 Big Bash League, implemented in order to make it as easy as possible for fans to stay connected with their favourite team.

Choose Your Team

Objectives

The challenges facing Reactive and the KFC T20 Big Bash League project included:

launching the digital presence for a new cricket league and eight new teams by providing the digital interpretation of the brands initially developed by FutureBrand,
introducing and increasing fan engagement with the Big Bash League, its teams and players, six months prior to a ball being bowled,
creating rivalry between the teams to have fans declaring their allegiances and joining in the rivalry
working in a multi-vendor environment with concurrent delivery on the same Sitecore platform – Cricket Australia was also in the process of delivering cricket. com.au and state websites onto the Sitecore platform, and
engaging users of the mobile apps with an exemplary content experience enabling visitors to connect with the new league via the convenience of their phone.

Strategy

Cricket Australia selected Sitecore for its focus on usability that allows casual users to easily manage websites, its multi-site management provides support and content sharing across many sites, and its sport and entertainment credentials – Sitecore is used by a number of high profile sports team: the US National Football League (Atlanta Falcons), English Premier League (Manchester City) and the US National Basketball Association (lebronjames.com).

To overcome low levels of initial familiarity, the idea was to create an energetic and cohesive program across all nine websites, leveraging opportunities afforded by digital media to reach the youth-oriented target market.

With the KFC T20 Big Bash League heralding a new era in cricket, the Android and iPhone apps provide more ways for fans to engage with T20 cricket.

The mobile apps provide immediate coverage of the KFC T20 Big Bash League anywhere, anytime. From live scores to match alerts, fans have immediate access to the action while they’re on the go. The Android and iPhone apps feature:

live scores and player stats,
video and match highlights in high definition,
match alerts, so fans never miss a game,
ability for fans to customise the app in their team colours and get the latest team news and results,
live match tweets from their team, and
behind-the-scenes video, player interviews, match highlights and more.

Hurricanes

Execution

Following a stringent information architecture process that clearly defined the overall structure, content and hierarchy for each site, Reactive worked closely with Cricket Australia on the visuals for the sites, customising each design according to the appropriate team/league branding produced by FutureBrand.

Building the Big Bash League sites with Sitecore CMS, Reactive had to strike a balance between keeping all nine sites technically consistent yet visually distinct. Templates were developed in HTML and CSS, and included flexibility for customisation and future enhancements.

With fan engagement as a key objective, the KFC T20 Big Bash League site includes features such as a live countdown, hype videos to generate anticipation for the start of the competition and rich media content, encouraging fans to pick their teams.

Extensive social integration such as the Facebook Like Ladder and Fan Voice page create a sense of tribalism, as fans are urged to join in and declare their allegiances, making them part of this exciting milestone in Australian sporting history.

Reactive was able to tap into local and global Sitecore resources that provided them with both feedback and advice on best practice implementation of the solution. This resulted in nine visually distinctive websites that are all part of one cohesive platform.

Hurricanes app

Technical description

Sitecore CMS
Cadability/Infoplum – to show game scores and team statistics,
Brightcove video player – to provide fans with screenings of live matches and highlights,
Disqus for commenting, and
social API integration to Facebook and Twitter.

The apps were built across the iPhone and Android platforms, ensuring wide compatibility. The apps communicate with live score information via a ‘restful’ API that Reactive developers custom built.

The app’s content is managed via Sitecore CMS, while push notifications are managed and served with Urban Airship for both apps. Analytics are captured with Flurry, a mobile app analytics platform. For each device, our developers used slightly different designs so that they fit in with their own ecosystems and neither felt like a ‘port’ of the other.

Three apps

Results

The Sitecore platform allowed Reactive and Cricket Australia to rapidly build and launch a digital presence for the new KFC T20 Big Bash League and team pages inside of 10 months.

Sitecore provides a centralised platform for eight team sites to work out of, which allows for easier management of content and admin access.

The websites have clocked up jaw-dropping numbers, with site traffic exceeding expectations. Over six million page views were delivered during the season and fan engagement on the site was over three and a half minutes. The newfound fans have continued pouring in, with an average 75-80% of new visits recorded.

The KFC T20 Big Bash League mobile apps, which pull in news and data from Sitecore, are also recording impressive numbers. The iPhone app has over 84,000 downloads and, during the cricket season, peaked at number one in the App Store for free sports apps. Cricket fans are clamouring to download the Android app as well, with over 23,500 new users since launch. The Android version is rated 4.7 stars out of five on the Android Market and the iPhone version is rated four out of five stars.

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Branding Australian cricket’s subversive little brother

by Marketing ON 15 May 2012

Project: Twenty20 Big Bash League

Client: Cricket Australia

Agency: FutureBrand

Background

Australian cricket was facing a huge and quite unique challenge in a sports context, due to it having three related but increasingly distinct formats: test, one-day and Twenty20.

Careful portfolio analysis revealed both the potential ‘fit’ between the Twenty20 short-form format and younger audiences but also highlighted the dangers of one format potentially cannibalising or diluting the audience for another format.

Part of the problem was cricket being perceived as a comparatively boring and traditional game, at odds with the intensity and immediacy sought by a younger generation of fans. Structural issues were exacerbated by poor performances at test level, traditionally the barometer for Australia’s popular attitude to cricket, and by other off-field controversy.

The new portfolio strategy was centered around the reinvention of the state-based T20 format to specifically target a younger audience through the introduction of new league, with new teams and new players, all expressed through an unexpected raw, urban attitude – by any estimation a big shift for a sport steeped in tradition and perceived to be on the wane.

Objectives

Australian cricket needed to reengage a potentially lost generation of younger cricket fans as both game attendances and TV audiences were stagnant or in decline.

Increasing competition from other sporting codes displaying a much more ‘in touch’ attitude to overall youth style and channels (as opposed to simple ‘sport’ style) were seriously threatening cricket’s position as ‘Australia’s favourite sport’.

Catch it

Strategy

Inventing a league and tournament with no history, using teams with no grass-roots whilst simultaneously distancing the T20 product from the one-day format without alienating ‘mums and dads’ seemed an almost impossible task (on paper at least).

What we did have going for us was a product that perfectly suited the adrenaline/drama junkie desires of Australian youth yet was still underdeveloped and poorly packaged. We also had a new league format that would address the ‘so what?’ criticisms of previous Big Bash seasons in that it would culminate in a genuine finals series.

One other asset to activate was in the latent strength of local (as opposed to state vs. state) rivalries that generate so much passion in the NRL and AFL. In using much more tangible city profiles we would be able to quickly attach some genuine identity to these new teams.

To increase the distinction from the past each team would select a non-traditional team colour and a name that would not evoke a local animal or historic aspect. So no ‘Redbacks’, ‘Bushrangers’ or ‘Blues’. Again, this was a big cultural and brand departure.

Lastly was how the teams would be constituted. There would be the excitement of the initial rostering process where unlike the ‘all star’ approach of the Indian IPL, the Big Bash League would combine young local talent, experienced test stars and some cosmopolitan glamour via two overseas stars per team – be they from Delhi, Auckland, Islamabad or Somerset.

Fixture

Execution

There was an opportunity to challenge the visual paradigm cricket and express what ‘anti-cricket’ or ‘cricket’s subversive little brother’ could look like. The heightened dynamism, intensity and immediacy designed to provoke renewed interest from a younger generation of fans.

From the split shield symbol to the gritty concrete textures, every aspect of our creative approach was designed to convey anti-establishment and a ‘counter cricket culture’ that would deliberately polarise audiences – even at the expense of the alienating older traditionalists.

The desired outcomes included projected increases in broadcast reach, game attendance and commercial revenue with a significant contribution from the targeted younger generation of fans and their families.

The new identity and design informed a huge array of social media and advertising applications that collectively challenged preconceptions of cricket, built strong anticipation and awareness of the new league, and ultimately provoked passionate debate about the new teams and players.

Billboard

Results

The results from the first season show a dramatic increase in both broadcast reach (80% increase compared to previous season) and game attendance (58% above KPI with 49% attending a T20 game for the first time) predominantly from the targeted younger audience.

The media value of the T20 Big Bash has increased significantly (730% compared to the previous season).

Over 30% of kids interested in cricket now describe themselves as fanatical about the T20 format compared to the previous season.

Mike McKenna of Cricket Australia says that the target of attracting 16,000 fans per match was exceeded: “We certainly beat that: we’re at nearly 18,000.”

“The TV ratings have really surprised us and delighted us. We were expecting somewhere in the region of 165,000 – and we are well ahead of that in the region of 280,000 per match so we’re very pleased with those KPIs.”

Poster

Moments with marketers: Rod Curtis

by Marketing ON 18 November 2009

Marketingmag.com.au had a chat with Rod Curtis – strategy and planning director and partner of Twenty20 Communications. If you would like to see a certain
marketer profiled, please email your suggestion to Sean Greaney on sean.greaney@niche.com.au.

What do you do?

 Co-founder and partner of Twenty20 Communication Group, a marketing and communication strategy consulting and outsourcing company. I work within the management team as strategy and planning director, working closely with our clients’ senior leadership to integrate their business strategy and brand/marketing strategy.   

What was your first job?

 Started out as a dispatch junior in an advertising agency. I would fetch proofs from The Herald and The Age, back in the days of hard copy. A character-building first job while I was at school.    

What did you study?

 Completed secondary school at Melbourne High School while playing a few Victorian Football League games for Richmond Football Club, before re-thinking my professional football career and studying Advertising at RMIT.    

Describe a typical day?

 Typical day for me:    

Alarm goes off at 6.00 am. Have breakfast early. Organise kid’s school preparation, some mornings this can mean an early drop off for school sport. Some mornings I am off early for a T20 staff or management meeting. Some mornings I am off early to the airport.

  Client and or internal meetings throughout the day. This means rarely eating out at lunchtime, a salad at the desk is a favorite for me while checking out Business Spectator (it’s my home page), local newspaper sites (to keep up with the local comings and goings), The Wall Street Journal (a must read) and the Richmond Football Club site (for masochistic reasons).

Conduct planning workshops for clients, including a client Board Strategy session. Dig for analytical and insight ‘gold’ as part of the planning process. Constantly work on business development.

  Head home between 6.00 pm and 7.00 pm for our family evening meal (I am blessed to have the world’s greatest home ‘chef’ preparing our meals).

  Help with the kid’s homework (if it’s at my level). Continually marvel at the insight and knowledge of two teenage and one soon-to-be teenage girls. Regularly realise I’m out of my depth.

Assist at a minor level with my partner’s new web business, and get some one-on-one time to discuss the day’s events (family/business/political) with her.

Get on to the domestic duties. Sit down at the laptop at some stage when it’s all quiet (like now!). Television hardly gets a look in at night for me.

Get prepared for tomorrows work load.

  Crash out into bed around 11.00 pm and get ready to do it all again.

What is on the agenda for next year?    

Refine the T20 marketing outsource capability and develop the analytical firepower of our firm. Including expanding our digital knowledge, promoting our brand and improving our creative output. Travel. Learning. Learning some more. 

 What Brand do you love the most? Dislike the most?

 Firstly, in the context of this article I would rather use the term ‘admire’.

Secondly, let’s make sure we get the definitions right. A brand is not a brand unless its users can define what added value that brand gives them on a personal level.

 In that context, even though I don’t use one, I have to admire the Apple brand. They have convinced their users that they are being more creative when they use one. That coupled with outstanding design, smart marketing and constant, constant innovation makes them unbeatable.  

What don’t I admire? Any retailer, who believes that all they have to do is spend, spend, spend on repetitious, routine product-and-price advertising. Take away this regular diet of unimaginative, non-engaging, old fashioned interruptive dross and what have you got left? Surprise, surprise – nothing. No brand.  

What do you believe has been the most significant moment in the history of marketing?

 Tough question… not sure if there has only been one. At different times different events were profound, broadcast media being a standout last century. Of more recent times it has to be the rises and rise of the online world and the real time marketing opportunities it presents. Delivering the right product, in the right place at the right time is changing marketing overnight. 

 Where can people find you?    

Linkedin
Company website: www.twenty20.com.au