Driving Fan Experience Into the Future

ABOUT THIS ENTRY

By merging the role of viewer and storyteller, immersive experiences help sports organizations and brands form closer emotional connections with the audiences they’re trying to reach. Armed with this insight, Deloitte and the USGA set out to develop an immersive experience allowing fans to engage with the U.S. Open Championships in a differentiated way. Enter U.S. Open Augmented Reality built by Deloitte.

A product of more than 20 Deloitte professionals working across a range of technical, design and digital experience disciplines, the 2022 app uses near real-time data and the latest in augmented reality (AR) to experience any shot, any pairing, anywhere in 3D. Using an integrated campaign, Deloitte was able to engage golf fans, while simultaneously showcasing our capabilities and role in producing innovative digital solutions to business decision-makers, all with the goal of expanding our brand permission in the marketplace.

How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?

As a B2B organization, we strive to bring our professional services experience to the organizations we sponsor. Beyond that, we find great storytelling opportunities when those services include a tangible consumer benefit output. For this campaign, U.S. Open AR built by Deloitte was a product that all golf fans could experience; moreover, it also provided a business storyline Deloitte could use to help expand understanding of our services with our core BDM audience. All in all, the app development and corresponding campaign was a collaboration between Deloitte and the USGA, both from a product development and marketing perspective.

On the product side, USGA and Deloitte technical and product management specialists developed an easy-to-navigate and future-forward experience to give golf fans a differentiated second-screen experience. From a marketing side, Deloitte and the USGA’s sponsorship marketing teams worked closely on consistent, compelling messaging and creative.

This ran across both organizations’ channels to maximize scale, engagement, and return on objectives. All said, this campaign helped push the bounds on how B2B sponsors can leverage their own services to drive forward both their business and the business of the sports organizations they sponsor.

Objective

Our relationship with the United States Golf Association combines the role of both sponsor and client, with Deloitte serving as a trusted advisor and professional services provider since 2014. While golf has a rich history of entertaining fans, the USGA and Deloitte have set out to use emerging technologies to help golf fans connect to the game in new ways.

Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world's most admired brands, including nearly 90% of the Fortune 500® and more than 7,000 private companies. As part of those offerings, our Digital Reality practice provides a unique storytelling opportunity to showcase Deloitte’s technology capabilities and organizational focus on innovation with business decision makers (BDMs) and consumers – golf fans in this case.

To maximize our sponsorship, we showcased work performed by Deloitte for the USGA through an integrated campaign relevant to all golf fans. As a B2B organization, being front and center with BDMs is important for our sponsorships, and data supports that golf fans over-index as BDMs. With that, interest from a wider golf fans audience naturally supports Deloitte’s desire to drive awareness and understanding, further positioning Deloitte as an innovation-driven organization.

Strategy & Execution

By merging the role of viewer and storyteller, immersive experiences can help brands form closer emotional connections with their target audiences. Armed with this insight, Deloitte and the USGA set out to develop an immersive experience allowing fans to engage with the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open in an enhanced and differentiated way.

Enter U.S. Open Augmented Reality built by Deloitte, an app leveraging U.S. Open Championship data—who hit the ball, where it traveled, and how far—and real-time analytics on top of a cloud platform to connect golf fans to the game in new ways.

The app allowed fans to create their own viewing experience, with three unique features:

• 1/ Live Play, where fans could engage with 3D views of all 18 holes and follow every shot in AR,
• 2/ Custom Player Pairings, so fans could follow their favorite golfers and compare their performance, even when not paired together,
• 3/ 360° USGA Golf Museum Tour, where fans could experience a virtual tour through the nation’s oldest sports museum.

To that end, Deloitte developed an integrated campaign highlighting our role in engineering the app to further establish Deloitte as an innovation-driven organization with a focus on BDMs.

Organizations

• Deloitte
• United States Golf Association
• Leff Communications
• Partners Creative
• Wavemaker

Credits

Andrew Cohn
Brand Manager, Sponsorships
Deloitte

Katie Kreps
Lead, Sponsorships
Deloitte

Christine Moore
Group Brand Director
Deloitte

Janet DeNunzio
Group Brand Director
Deloitte

Eve Wallin
Manager
Deloitte

Suzanne Gylfe
Managing Director
Deloitte

Tom Marriott
Principal
Deloitte

Lauren Leimkuehler
Account Supervisor
Deloitte