All Blacks
See it in actionThe world’s best sporting team teamed up with one of the worlds leading voice agencies, VERSA to create a voice-first way to bring the All Blacks into your living room.
Strategy & Creative
Using voice to find a global audience
The All Blacks are the world’s best sporting team with a winning average of 77%. As one of the world’s leading voice agencies, and with a true New Zealand heritage, for VERSA, this skill was about bringing to life the world’s best rugby team. To do this we had to capture an audience that lives all around the world, incorporating over 4.5 million social supporters. We also needed to make the experience compelling beyond the world cup in Japan, 2019.
We designed an experience that caters to both Rugby World Cup fans and loyal supporters that follow the team all year round. to do this we designed features such as a weekly quiz and match based recap or insight.
UX & Conversation Design
Customising the experience for fans
We wanted to connect with fans wherever they were on their world cup journey. So we tracked data to provide a personalised experience on return; have they used it before, have they engaged with features and how often do they use it.
Supported by our strategy, we wanted to know exactly where each fan was during their support. We wanted to map this to a specific moment in the skill, whether this is after the match before the match or way after the world cup. VERSA worked with the All Blacks to record custom audio and visual content straight from the field. This was supported by voice-overs from the All Blacks digital team to create a three-way narrative between a smart speaker, the team and live digital content.
Technology & Development
A visual voice experience
The entire voice experience supports Alexa Presentation Language (APL), allowing for dynamic leaderboard screens and engaging layouts beyond the standard templating system. We wanted to include the full power of a haka, match recaps straight from the All Blacks website and live data. To do this we needed to use an automated transcoder to upload audio and video which compresses in real-time to the appropriate Alexa format.
Amazon’s new GameOn Leaderboard was also used. This is essentially a set of flexible APIs that allow you to build cross-platform competitions into your games that drive engagement and increase monetization, therefore, strengthening your fanbase with leaderboards and leagues, awarding in-game prizes.