"Hi, Logan Couture here. Welcome to my bobblehead." (Courtesy San Jose Sharks)
San Jose Sharks player Logan Couture takes fans behind the scenes with him in an exclusive video to understand life on the road as an NHL player. But a singular source grants access to the video: a Logan Couture bobblehead.
The Sharks handed out 17,000 of the promotional items, the first augmented reality bobblehead in sports, before a Feb. 10 game at SAP Center. Fans could use the Sharks + SAP Center app released in January with the giveaway to watch the exclusive video and enjoy a line they wouldn't have otherwise heard: "Hi, Logan Couture here. Welcome to my bobblehead."
"We are trying to make them more than a giveaway at a game," said Doug Bentz, Sharks vice president of marketing and digital. "We want to make them content platforms to bring them to life for fans who come to a game and have them live on beyond the game with an experience."
The Sharks worked with Zeality and Venues Next to create the opportunity. "Augmented reality is one of those applications that allows us to extend the fan experience," Bentz said. "Obviously you need the app, and the bobblehead was going to drive additional adoption and usage of the app, but the ultimate goal of the app and bobblehead is to really take the experience of sitting and watching the Sharks to a holistic experience where everything you do can be enhanced through mobile."
The Franklin Group manufactured the bobblehead. Fans access the video by pointing their phones at a Western Digital logo on the bobblehead while in the AR section of the app. After the giveaway, the AR section received 6,000 visits, Bentz said.
The Sharks liked the idea well enough to plan a second giveaway, a Joe Thornton and Brent Burns bobblehead planned for April 7 that ties to a local barbershop commercial promoting the Sharks' players and the NHL season. The AR video associated with that bobble gives fans exclusive behind-the-scenes content from the commercial shoot, opening up the next wave of AR for the Sharks that uses AR as a marketing tool to bring to life official sponsors, team stories or the SAP Center.
Sponsors appreciate the opportunity. As part of the initial AR run, "Having fans point at this sponsor logo is huge exposure for Western Digital they wouldn't get through passive placement," Bentz said. "Sponsors want to be associated with and participate in the next stages of technology. It does great things for companies like Western Digital, a technology company, to show they are involved in the next big thing." The bobblehead was part of Western Digital's presenting sponsorship for the game.
Other teams around the league have taken notice of the Couture launch. The Monday after the bobblehead game, the NHL office called the Sharks requesting that they present the AR effort at league meetings next month in Las Vegas, and a few teams contacted Bentz directly. "It has drawn a lot of interest from fans and the industry," Bentz said. "We are a great use case that was successful."
The Sharks have already begun planning for next year and expect to continue experimenting with AR, especially following the success of this first at-scale test. "This is very early on in the usage of augmented reality in sports," Bentz said, "and we continue to develop, and we will be there at the forefront trying to find new ways to use it."