Unleashing the Innovators by Jim Stengel

Author:Jim Stengel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

BE PATIENT—AND BRING YOUR PARTNER ALONG IN SMALL STEPS

For most people, going to a live sports event is a fun afternoon or night out with friends, family, and your home team or favorite player—along with thousands of other fans, heart-pumping noise levels, and plenty of food and drink you may come to regret later on. Alex Hertel gets all that. But he also sees the stadium experience differently from most of us: as a series of disconnected digital devices, from ticket scanners, smartphones, team apps, and iBeacons to scoreboards, Jumbotrons, and cash registers. Hertel’s goal is to link them all together in a way that’s engaging and entertaining for fans (through puzzles to solve and prizes to win) and lucrative for his corporate partners (thanks to games that lead to more purchases). With his startup, Xperiel, Hertel has created a way to do it that’s as cheap as it is elegant—a simple and fast way to code and create interactive games without the expense of hiring a tech development team.

In Hertel’s embryonic business, seeing is believing—but not every potential partner is technically savvy enough to be a believer. So he’s had to be selective about whom he shows his innovative platform to, relying on high-powered introductions to get in front of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Sacramento Kings, and the New York Jets, companies with digital expertise, large fan bases, and an eagerness to make live spectacles more engaging. Even then, Hertel has had to do things in a measured way, careful not to get too far ahead of himself in selling pilot launches to these storied teams.

Xperiel’s first sponsored pilot launched during three games into the 2016 season of the Jets, a popular NFL franchise (if not very successful that season). Hertel embedded a game within the Jets’ mobile app that allows fans to predict touchdowns while the game is live. You get four TD calls and a chance to win prizes such as game tickets if you pick correctly. The kicker: if you run through those picks unsuccessfully, you get one more chance to call a touchdown—by buying a Bud Light from a concession stand (or retrieving one from your refrigerator at home) and scanning the can’s Bud Light logo into your phone. That fires a trigger to give you one more call.

If the experiment sounds a little crude, Hertel is the first to agree. This was a kind of blind date between the digital and real worlds with only a hint of a possibly rich relationship between the two. There was minimal promotion of Xperiel’s game besides fliers on the seats at MetLife Stadium and some flashing on the Jumbotron: no Budweiser ads or push notifications on fans’ phones by the Jets. During the first game, roughly a thousand fans participated.

One day, however, you’ll be greeted by name as your ticket is scanned, with your face popping up on a big board. You’ll be able to compete against fans in the stadium as you play trivia games, solve puzzles, and collect digital player cards.

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