Sydney ThundAR fan engagement using AR at the BBL for HomeWorld by Mobiddiction

Here’s some info on how we use face detection technology and used Augmented Reality (AR) for fan engagement for HomeWorld as part of their support for Sydney Thunder at the BBL T20 Cricket.

We teamed up with HomeWorld on working on some of their digital work and as luck has it, not only that we love our Cricket but HomeWorld are also a key sponsor of the Sydney Thunder team. A match made int heaven, we put on our thinking caps and the Team at Mobiddiction for the next few weeks after several rounds of ideas saw us designing, developing, integrating and coming up with a home grown Augmented Reality (AR) fuelled activation for HomeWorld in support of the Sydney Thunder Team for the Big Bash League (BBL) and we called this activation the “HomeWorld – Sydney ThundAR” program.

Sydney Thunder BBL augmented reality AR by Mobiddiction

As one of Australia’s biggest and most established display home companies, HomeWorld is also a key partner of the women’s and men’s Sydney BBL teams.

The key aim of the activation was to introduce a brand experiential activation that did not look and feel like the same kind of marketing done before. Instead, we wanted to create a way to engage Sydney Thunder fans by allowing them to capture their best moments with family and friends as they entered the stadium and capture an AR based memory in the excitement when they are in full spirit of cricket supporting their home team – Sydney Thunder.

Working closely with the ever supportive team at HomeWorld, we developed a simple but fun way to engage Sydney Thunder fans that also showcased some fun, new technology for users to experience and take home a piece of their experience with them being part of an in-stadium activity.

Front row seats to Sydney Thunder’s awesome season!

It’s no secret that the BBL attracts a ton of family audiences and with an every growing fan base as each season goes by, and this one was no different.

With 8 teams competing in a short 20/20 over format, the BBL sees each team made up of a maximum of two international players and local heroes who have represented their ‘A’ team in their home country. It really made for an interesting contest!

The league is also a great opportunity for young and emerging players to shine and increase their chances to represent their country.

The games were played across the different states, this season home game venues included the Manuka Oval in Canberra and the Giants – Sydney Showground Stadium in the Olympic Park precinct.

With such an exciting and diverse crowd, we wanted to make sure that we developed a simple but fun way to engage Sydney Thunder fans that also showcased some fun, new technology for users to experience.

Augmented Reality powered by Mobiddiction platform for managing content

Bring on the “Sydney Thund-AR”

Using Mobiconnect our platform as a starting point, we built an AR-powered activation that was based on the HomeWorld / Sydney Thunder brand and titled, Sydney Thund-AR, the activation included an iPad app that was built using the Apple AR-Kit and included face detection technology that recognised different face shapes and sizes.

Fans had options to choose and place a variety of digital “face painting” style filters with the Sydney Thunder theme filters onto their faces and share these awesome moments on the mobile or to an email or get a chance to see their fan moments on the big screen or across the TV / iPTV screens across the games during the game.

The results was sheer joy on fans faces as they engaged with just a few interactions and took away a piece of memorabilia as a ‘Sydney Thunder” fan at the games.

Our UI/UX team crafted a range of filters, using various shapes and contours, so that fans of all ages and sizes could get in on the action as well. We added textures to make the final image look exactly like the filter being face-painted in real life. We also introduced a ‘Gif’ option, because what is an activation without some Gifs!

face detection and using AR by Mobiddiction

Sydney Thunder fans passing the HomeWorld Marquee were ushered by the awesome marketing engagement team to customised iPad’s running the Sydney ThundAR app. To fans surprise and delight, auto face detection and AR based filters were placed on their faces to be able to share. Creating a lot of excitement with fans at the games in just a few seconds, once fans were happy with their images, they could send that pic to either their mobiles or email and the giant stadium screens which would display the images in real time on the big screens!

Team Mobiddiction monitored all big screens content and our tech team kept an eye on the delivery of SMS’s/Emails and images to fans while they watched the games.

AR customer journey map

Fans who were happy to share their image or Giffy on the stadium screen were also able to enter their mobile or email details to get a copy of their image. They could download or share theses images straight away.

It was an incredible collaborative effort between HomeWorld and Mobi, support from the organising team at the stadiums including working closely with the Sydney Thunder teams, management and CricketNSW and support from the venues.

Mike Vasavada with Chris Green Sydney Thunder at HomeWorld Marsden Park

Team Mobiddiction took care of the activation logistics including event activation set up and testing – yes we travelled to Canberra in scorching heat and Bushfires in NSW in Dec 2019. We had onsite support at all games to ensure that everything went smoothly at all the games and our backend and monitoring teams supporting the crew from our server and activity monitoring centres.

Team Mobi could not be happier with how it all went – and of course how could we complain with all the amazing cricket played by the Sydney Thunder team! Go Thunder!!

We look forward to the next BBL Big Bash.