Driving fan engagement and kicking commercial goals with the Brisbane Lions
To build a sense of community and boost engagement for a large following, we developed a solution that enabled fans to get in on the action.
Over 28,000 die-hard members
The Brisbane Lions is an Australian rules football club playing in the Australian Football League. The club has established a strong fan base and is one of the most prominent clubs in the AFL.
Many fans of the Lions are life-long supporters who are heavily invested in the club's future. As such, the Lions receive extensive engagement on all of their social media platforms, with Facebook as their most engaged platform at over 140,000 likes.
Inundated with fan support and queries
On any given day, the Lions receive an average of 20 Facebook messages from current and potential members. Message volume fluctuates heavily, increasing immediately before and after games. With most games played on the weekends, responding to a high volume of inquiries quickly and cost-effectively is a challenge.
Not responding to a customer query regarding tickets and transport on game day can result in lost revenues and disgruntled fans. The Lions team needed to scale their customer service to ensure fans get the care and attention they deserve.
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24/7 fan engagement
bot•hello immortalised Roy, the Lions' mascot, in Chatbot form, delivering a persona-driven customer service experience targeted to devoted Lions fans. The result is a fun, engaging, and novel user experience that leaves a lasting impression.
To give the Chatbot a personality that felt real, we worked with the Lions to record GIFs of their mascot. We used these GIFs across the Chatbot as greetings, reactions, and celebrations to users’ messages. It was essential to the Lions that the experience felt on-brand, especially towards a younger audience.
Rumour has it that Roy the Chatbot played a huge role in the Lion’s successful 2019 season.
- 🧠 Intelligent responses: User queries for tickets, upcoming games, and membership (e.g., “Who are we playing next week?”).
- 📷 Lions photo filters: If you send Roy a selfie, he'll add a Lions-branded filter to the photo and send it back to you.
- 🛒 Fixtures and ticketing: Fans are able to dynamically generate upcoming fixtures and buy tickets directly through Ticketek.
- 🎮 Engaging gamification: An intricate multiple choice ‘Who Am I’ trivia quiz that's shareable in Messenger to inspire fan engagement.
- 📣 Personalised news: The Brisbane Lions now have a new, hyper-engaging channel to send content directly to their fans.
- ⚡Instant 24/7 service: Roy the Chatbot doesn’t sleep, take breaks, or change moods (as far as we know). He works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year!
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