The inaugural Premier League Summer Series presented an opportunity to captivate American fans. Despite no points being at stake, the hunt for the '24 Premier League trophy was officially underway. For the teams, matches served as a crucial platform for teams to set the tone for the upcoming season. For the Premier League, this was a moment to expand their presence in the States and make American fans feel appreciated. In partnership with the Premier League and their creative agency, Doppelgänger, ROSE designed and developed an innovative augmented reality trophy hunt to spark enthusiasm across the United States, and more specifically in the five host cities, for the 2023-2024 Premier League Season.
Overview
We created an augmented reality scavenger hunt which allowed us to showcase the Summer Series cities in a unique way. The experience provided an opportunity to showcase all 20 of the Premier League teams, even those not participating. By using augmented reality, we stood up the experience quickly without the need for permits from the host cities for physical advertising, nor the traditional physical marketing cost.
Through this innovative hunt, we not only emphasized the importance of the Summer Series games in the pursuit of the coveted Premier League trophy, but also provided a dynamic platform for fans to demonstrate their unwavering support for their favorite teams. Additionally, the hunt itself acted as a powerful promotional tool, effectively creating a buzz around the Summer Series games.
To engage fans we created a two pronged experience, one for fans inside the host cities to participate in an augmented reality scavenger hunt, and one for fans outside of the host cities to show their support for their favorite team.
In-City Experience
Enthusiastic fans in the Summer Series cities could utilize the in-experience map to uncover 20 virtual Premier League trophies. Upon entering a trophy boundary, users tapped to unveil a 3D trophy and sky segmentation filter. This interaction added the corresponding team’s badge to their trophy cabinet collection. Accumulating trophies within the city granted entries into the Premier League’s Summer Series giveaway. Additionally, fans had the opportunity to capture photos and videos with their collected trophies and even transform themselves into the trophy using the face filter.
At-Home Experience
For supporters outside of the Summer Series cities, a separate augmented reality experience enabled them to express solidarity with their favorite club. Users could place the Premier League trophy in augmented reality, engage with the face filter for unique photo opportunities, and share their experiences on social media. They were also provided the chance to enter a sweepstakes for exclusive Premier League merchandise.
Utilizing a Content Management System
We harnessed the power of Contentful to seamlessly manage our location-based interactions. This enabled us to distinguish between at-home users and host city users. In the latter, there were 100 distinct locations, each with its individual geofence. Additionally, every location was equipped with specific team assets. Notably, team instances were linked across cities, ensuring users could seamlessly transition between, say, NYC and Philadelphia, with their Trophy Cabinet displaying all their acquired trophies using the relevant city's map.
By leveraging Contentful, we streamlined the management of multiple sets of assets, ensuring real-time updates for users they moved from location to location. This allowed for seamless user engagement and also made for easily updatable assets as new teams were being moved into the Premier League. This project unique in that by using a CMS for the augmented reality components and locations, the experience could be updated without the need for an engineering team.
The campaign was a success in that the main goal for the experience was for users to enter into the Premier League Summer Series Sweepstakes. The experience recorded a 95% form completion rate for enteries into the sweepstakes. Additionally the average engagement time per session was 47 sec, which is high given the context that the digital trophies were not in close proximity, meaning that each trophy found was almost always a new experience session for users. The in-city experience averaged just over 4 trophies placed per participating user!
