Meet Nick Child. Scratch golfer, poker ace, data and analytics nerd

March 22, 2022

 

A week and a half into his new position as Head of Insights and Analytics, Meshh’s latest senior hire seems a little bewildered by the questions being asked of him by someone 8,000 kilometres and six time zones away. “It just sounds like you’re looking for hobbies and things that keep me busy,” says Nick Child. He’s right.

 

That’s because spatial analysis isn’t exactly the kind of industry most kids grow up dreaming to work in. And, not surprisingly, Child came to it in a round-about way.

 

Raised in Johannesburg, Child admits he wasn’t a great student—or, more accurately, a diligent one. “Definitely a sports guy every day after school, to the detriment of homework and academics,” he says. Eventually he picked up a golf club and found his first passion. “I wanted to be a pro.”

 

That led Child to the University of Cape Town, where he studied Business Commerce and played for the golf team. He saw some of the world in his spikes, including a few of the great historical links in Scotland—The Old Course at St. Andrews, Royal Troon and Carnoustie. Now a husband and father to a 17-month-old, Child no longer plays as often as he’d like, but still manages to make his interviewer’s jaw drop with envy when asked what his handicap is today. “It’s zero.”

 

It was while he was in Cape Town that Child found a second passion. “I used to play a lot of online poker—another thing holding me back from doing better academically,” he says, laughing. “I took it quite seriously and wanted to make that my job until it was outlawed [in the U.S.]. That kind of killed off the easy money and I was forced to get a real job.”

 

Asked how having a poker background has helped him professionally, Child pauses before answering: “Poker is a brilliant game. It's unlike other gambling games, you're not playing against the house, you're playing against other people, and all sorts of things come into play—statistics, psychology, game theory, all those types of things.

 

“People often say the boardroom is nothing but a poker table; the same concepts are going on. So yeah, I definitely think it's helped me career wise, and kind of shaped some of the decisions I've made.”

 

After receiving his degree and specializing in marketing, Child did get a real job. He started with Nielsen, analyzing point-of-sale data before founding his own consulting business a few years later. “When I went to work for Nielsen, I was presenting a lot of data and doing marketing presentations. Having an ability to work with data really kind of set me apart and elevated my career. And that led me to start working for myself.”

 

After four years of hustling for himself, Child moved to London to work in competitive analysis for one of Europe’s largest cinema chains. He was there for nearly five years, made a quick pitstop with a sports gaming company and then moved on to Meshh. That last move brings us back to spatial analysis, and what gets a scratch golfer and former wannabe pro poker player up in the morning. “I think masses of data, the ability to understand what's happening—the secrets that are hiding in broad daylight,” Child says of his latest passion.

 

As for Meshh, he loves the start-up feel as well as the client base. “I don't really want to be a tiny cog in a massive organization,” he says. “And the types of events—sports, music festivals, those types of things—excite me. From the first interview, I just felt like this was where I wanted to be.”

 

If you’re looking to take your event ROI to the next level, get in touch with Meshh for a consultation. Eventually, Child could be the one telling you how best to optimize your physical spaces and activations. But if he’s doing it over 18 holes or around a card table, just know that you’re in for some good news and, quite likely, some bad.

Measuring Event Marketing ROI – the “Fine Line” for Future Success

Earlier this month, Meshh CEO Caroline McGuckian had this kicker of a quote in a Limelight Platform original article about measuring event marketing; “There is a perfectly good business in being second …. because they’ll have learned from the first people’s mistakes. They’ll be much more commercial, much more sensible, much more efficient, much more prepared. So, I want to be the second person to land on Mars.”

Here, McGuckian expands on that idea, offering some thoughts on how clients have the chance to be “first to Mars”—and what they should look out for on that journey. 

Let’s take this out of the Bezos/Branson realm. What you’re saying is you’d rather learn from others’ mistakes than make them yourself first? 

Partly, but it’s also that people at the bleeding edge are often creating technology for the sake of it and haven’t worked out applications [for it] that people need. 

How so? 

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. Your fridge can tell you whether you need milk, but is that overly meaningful? Technology can do a lot of things, but the use cases for it need to be in line with an identified customer need. I often find that the people who are first are either answering a very niche case, or they’re on a self-indulgent journey. It’s the people who come after who understand how to actually turn it into something useful in today’s world. 

Is there an example you can cite? 

At the moment, the one for me is the driverless car. People like driving, people like that experience. So, we’re creating technology to remove something that people generally consider a positive, enjoyable experience. And it’s because somebody decided that this would be a good idea. Probably based on a movie that they saw as a child. 

What about an example where second was better than first? 

Google wasn’t the first search engine. The first search engines don’t exist anymore. The AltaVistas, they’re all gone. So, if you look at the technology that entered the market after that, Google is the best example.

You don’t think there’s necessarily a lot of cachet in being first to market or winning a race in business? 

I don’t think being first is a defining business strategy. Of course there’s a bit of cachet, depending on your vertical and depending on who you are, and of course you get to say ”I was first” in your collateral. But then everybody is an award-winning blank or a market-leading blank or a globally successful blank or a top-three provider of blank…Those are self-declared statements, there are plenty of them. Everybody does it. 

I don’t think you have to be first to be the winner. It’s a risk, but you don’t have to be first to build a successful product or business. 

Since Limelight Platform acquired Meshh, a lot of the messaging has been about how the core products offering is the first of its kind. Doesn’t that essentially mean you’re the first to Mars? We’re not the first to Mars. We are the first business to really look at and unify passive and active data. If it’s important to our clients, they have the opportunity to be first to Mars. 

But I will be really disappointed if “first” is why they buy us. They should choose us because we’re a combined entity—the information we provide and the context we give is more than one plus one; it’s the sum of the parts. 

Can you explain that in more detail? 

A lot of companies do bits of measurement and, to varying degrees of success, a lot of discerning clients have tried to put all of those bits together. It’s easier to engage and transact with somebody who owns the entire data journey rather than shoving together a bunch of different suppliers and trying to make sense of it yourself. 

We’re meeting a market need—which is the ability for clients to engage with measurement, from active to passive—and making it easier for them. 

How do you avoid being your industry’s version of AltaVista? 

We will continue to innovate. This is not the end of what we are attempting to do. It’s not the last product we’re going to launch. And it’s not the last dot we’re going to connect. This is the start of the data journey. 

With that in mind, what’s next for Limelight Platform? 

For us it’s always going to be about pragmatic iteration—building things that make a difference; developing data propositions that make a difference; and not getting too caught up in

measuring things for the sake of it, both as technology providers and also as clients. If you can’t action it, it’s just a spreadsheet…you’ve got to question whether you’re wasting your time in the first place. 

We don’t want to be a measuring business; we want to be a business that helps clients take action on measurements. 

Any thoughts on the future of the industry? 

There’s consumer risk with any kind of measurement. Let’s not forget that every target, every collection point is a person. That’s your mom or your kid or your best friend. And those human beings have become considerably more savvy about data and the value of their personal information. 

You can look at behaviors and you can start to draw conclusions and alignments based on patterns and data. That doesn’t mean that you need to track Jack from the front door and around the place, then tally that up with whether or not he bought a drink or a hat or entered a contest and went home by Uber. That’s what a marketer wants, not what Jack wants. 

If you’re going to push measurement to the edge of a consumer’s level of comfort with what he/she is prepared to give you, voluntarily or involuntarily, you’d better make sure that it’s worth their while—and improving your marketing ROI isn’t necessarily worthwhile to the human being you are measuring.[JG1] 

There is a fine line. We need to be very careful as an industry that we’re doing what Jack wants. And I think the first to get caught doing what they want, not what Jack wants, will want to be second that day.


If you need a simple, scalable way of collecting visitor behavior data in any physical space, we’d love to hear from you and you can follow us here on linkedin for updates. 

Meshh announces channel partnership with Relo Metrics

Brands and rights holders using the AI-powered sponsorship analytics platform Relo Metrics ,can now correlate in-market sales with in-venue sponsorship evaluation of activations.

LONDON, Aug. 25, 2021- Relo Metrics, the AI-powered sponsorship analytics platform formerly known as GumGum Sports, today announces an exclusive partnership with spatial intelligence company Meshh, allowing it to tap rich behavioral data on how audiences engage with sponsorship activations in-venue.

Founded in London, Meshh specializes in developing GDPR-compliant sensor based wifi analytics technologies that collect data on how audiences behave in the real world. Within stadiums and venues, Meshh’s technologies allow sports marketers to measure metrics such as unique reach, linger time and repeat visits around in-venue sponsorships in order to gain a deeper understanding of how on-site viewability can be optimized.

The partnership enables users of the Relo Metrics platform to view real insights pertaining to their audience at their on-site sponsorship activations, as opposed to the unreliable traditional method of looking at ticket sales as a proxy for value. Brands and rights holders are able to quantify on-site sponsorship engagement with a media value equivalency and pair it with performance insights spanning their branded content campaigns, broadcast television and digital platforms. This joint approach ensures alignment of their sponsorship portfolio to objectives such as brand awareness, audience engagement and sales. Users can also correlate Meshh’s in-stadium visitor data with retail visits, helping sponsors understand the business impact of their investments.

“We launched Relo Metrics to become the gold standard in sponsorship measurement, by reinventing authentic, actionable data that allows brands and teams to holistically understand how their sponsorships perform with increased agility and control.” says Brian Kim, CEO at Relo Metrics. “With the Meshh partnership and in-venue measurement, we are going wider and deeper into the sports marketing funnel, providing complete coverage of TV visible exposure, social media activations, and now in-venue activations. With all of this data housed through our Relo Metrics platform, rights holders and marketers have a one-stop solution for sponsorship intelligence that enables them to understand and optimize their sponsorship investments throughout the season.”

“Our partnership with Relo Metrics is a very natural fit.” says Caroline McGuckian, CEO at Meshh. “Both leaders in our fields, the coming together of screen and live sponsorship metrics is a unique proposition which services Brand, Rights Holders and Venue needs to have a holistic view of their investment. We talk a lot about a return to live experiences, we talk a lot about a post-COVID world, but we all know the future is somewhat unpredictable. What is predictable is that it will comprise both screen-based and physical experiences. This partnership represents that and is a step-change in how brands can understand the true value of their investments. We are excited about what the future holds as we work with Relo Metrics to build on the gold standard.”

See more from Sportbusiness and SportTechie


About Relo Metrics

Relo Metrics is an AI-powered sponsorship analytics platform that enables brands to track and optimize their sponsorship investments and powers teams and leagues with the insights they need to retain and grow revenue. The company tracks sponsor exposure across live broadcasts, social media, and streaming platforms, and delivers actionable insights via a fast, single solution platform. For more information, visit www.relometrics.com.

About Meshh

Meshh is a global leader in wifi analytics for live experiences. The sensor technology is not based around pre existing  infrastructure which enables the more accurate measurement of human behavior and provides dynamic, real time measurement of interior, exterior, permanent and transient assets. With extensive commercial, operational and retail applications Meshh data is an invaluable tool for multiple stakeholders. For more information, visit www.meshh.com

Related Links
https://www.limelightplatform.com/
https://www.meshh.com/

For further information: 

Terry Foster, CEO, Limelight Platform, tfoster@limelightplatform.com
Europe/ US – Caroline McGuckian, CEO, Meshh, caroline@meshh.com
APJ – Duncan McIntyre, Regional Director, Meshh duncan.mcintyre@meshh.com

Meet Sam Fisher, Account Manager

July 29, 2021

Another new starter at Meshh this month, we asked Sam Fisher a few questions so you can get to know him better – we’re so pleased to have him on board and look forward to formally introducing him to you soon!

What excites you most about working at Meshh?
After working in social analytics, it’s fascinating to mine and action on insights based on how individuals interact in real-world environments. With my background in sports, I’m ecstatic to drive value for clients on how they can improve venues operations and brand activations.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
General Manager of the Washington Wizards. I started to fanatically watch every Washington Wizards and Maryland Terrapins Basketball game at a young age. By the time I was in middle school, I could recite off memory the annual salary of each NBA player, created trade and free agent signing scenarios for the Wizards.

If you could see one movie again for the first time, what would it be and why?
The Dark Knight. I was fairly young when I first saw it plus Heath Ledger’s Joker is terrifyingly awesome the first time watching the film. I love comic book films and the Dark Knight is the best one ever between the writing, overall themes, and acting.

Do you have a hidden talent? What is it?
Imitations. I used to get in trouble a fair amount in school imitating my teachers.

To keep up to date with all our latest news and work, follow us on LinkedIn.

Advertising Week Infographics

 

September 29, 2020.

 

It's almost a year on from when Meshh were at Advertising Week New York measuring visitor behaviours, we wanted to share this infographic revealing some of the key insights we captured during the partnership last year.

 

Meshh deployed analytics sensors across the flagship Advertising Week event at the AMC Center in New York's Upper West Side.  Stages, sponsored lounges and networking areas were covered, in order to analyse visitor behaviour patterns.

 

Key insights included:

  • Total visitors, dwell times and their repeat behaviours
  • Sponsors and partners feedback on exposure and engagement at their activation
  • Analysis of popular speakers and which had the highest attendance with the longest dwell times, which was leveraged to optimise future schedules.
  • Comparison of arrival times in relation to the event schedule

 

 

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If you need a simple, scalable way of collecting visitor behavior data in any physical space, we’d love to hear from you and you can follow us here on linkedin for updates. 

Event Production Show 2021

March 25, 2021.

 

We’re excited to announce that we’re going to be at the Event Production Show on 26-27 May 2021 at Farnborough International – our first real-life event in over a year!

 

On Wednesday 26th May, our CEO Caroline McGuckian, will be taking the stage with Matt Roberts, Formula 1 Global Research Director to talk about how technology can be used to improve fan experiences.

 

We will also have an exhibition stand for the duration of the event;  

 

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Team Meshh

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For any questions or information about Meshh’s spatial analytics technology and how it could benefit your business, please get in touch. You can also follow us here on linkedin for updates. 

 

IFF 2020

September 8, 2020.

 

We were thrilled to take part in IFF this year as an Official Content Partner. Across the two days of the Wednesday and Thursday event, we had an opportunity to hear directly from music industry leaders about the impact that COVID-19 has had and the plan to bring events back online.

 

Our biggest take away was that there are good things on the horizon! From major globally known festivals to smaller independents, everyone is optimistic that the industry is going to bounce back better than ever.

 

A special thanks to the IFF + IQ Mag teams for doing a great job at replicating the in-person conference experience.  Read more on the festival's website

 

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If you need a simple, scalable way of collecting visitor behavior data in any physical space, we’d love to hear from you and you can follow us here on linkedin for updates. 

 

 

 

7 key attributes for Reopening Technology

September 23, 2020.

 

Tools for capacity monitoring and understanding visitor behaviour, and the associated ROI, are now at the forefront of marketing and operations professionals around the globe. Whether it’s in retail environments, stadiums, exhibition venues or public spaces, the best minds in the industry are hard at work understanding new requirements for monitoring visitor behavior, capacity and crowd density to allow for the safe return to live experiences.

 

Simultaneously, there’s a lot of noise in the market with an increased amount of tech providers ‘pivoting’ into this specialised area, selling unproven products and technology which were developed only a couple of months ago.  To help navigate, we’ve highlighted 7 key attributes to help your decision-making process easier.

 

 

1. Flexible placement

 

– The COVID-19 pandemic has raised visitor behavior questions that may have never been considered in the past.  As a result, the technologies you employ need to be discreet and robust enough to exist in any type of environment. Technologies that rely on existing infrastructure or an action by consumers are limited in their accuracy to measure density or capacities in key areas. Choosing a flexible solution will improve the longevity of the technology for future use.

 

2. Deployment

– Relevant to flexibility is the ease at which the technology can be deployed. Does your strategic plan for your space involve a large capex investment, reliance on existing infrastructure for connectivity and bandwidth? Does it require a team of expert technicians traveling to install it or, is there an option for sensors to be self-deployed following a basic product training session? Ensuring technology is turnkey for deployment is a vital part of evaluating new technologies.

 

3. Reporting & Benchmarks

– Does your vendor have experience working in your sector to assist with the right questions to ask, reporting metrics, benchmarks and ultimately, making better decisions around what success looks like?  Real-time reporting dashboards with easy to understand metrics are an important part of driving analytical decision making with key stakeholders. For additional flexibility, seek out tools that have a variety of export options to make it easy to ingest data into reporting templates, databases or aggregators.

 

4. deeper insight

– If a deeper dive into your data is required to distill key learnings, it’s important to find a platform with a dedicated insights team that can help draw key learnings from your measurement campaigns.

 

5. additional reopening features

– In addition to having extensive experience in the field of crowd analytics, has your vendor recently released features such as capacity and density monitoring to provide tools for your operations team to monitor foot traffic metrics in key areas of concern?  Consider what features are critical to understanding if the new measures you have in place are effective.

 

6. alerts and support

– What systems are in place to monitor behaviors during up time? The ability to set capacity thresholds with a simple email and SMS alert system will keep your security teams in the loop so they can respond to incidents faster, avoid overcrowding, bottlenecks and adjust staffing where appropriate.

 

7. consumer privacy compliance

– Is the technology compliant with local privacy guidelines?  GDPR and CCPA have very strict guidelines on what is legal with regard to collecting, processing and storing Personally Identifiable Information (PII).  A passive and anonymous system will ensure there is no need for visitors to connect to WiFi, Bluetooth or download an event app. By passively understanding the movement of mobile devices, you will not only be sure that the information you have gathered on behavioral data will not breach any local privacy guidelines, but you will also have the largest sample size of data for analysis with minimized barriers for data collection.

 

If you’ve made it to this point, reading the article on Meshh’s blog page, you may not be surprised to hear that our platform covers off all of these challenges!  If it sounds like something that is of value to your team in getting visitors back to your venue, retail or publicly accessible space, please get in touch to learn more.

 

Photo by luka lojk on Unsplash

Reopening Analytics Tech

July 17, 2020.

 

As venues have cautiously started to reopen, so have longer term strategic planning conversations, RFIs and briefs for brand activities.  Leading into the weekend, here’s a brief snapshot of what we’re seeing and hearing.

 

With many conferences with physical attendance pushing to 2021, AI-Everything in Dubai is one we're excited for,  rescheduled for March 2021. You can catch up on virtual content on their website in the meantime.

 

When the infection rate stays below 10 for 3 months , we can look forward to live music events  like this at the Sandstone Point Hotel outside of Brisbane in Australia.

 

Until then... the Drive-In is trending in a big way… and a safe bet for getting out, but staying safe!  Here’s our favorites;  Live Nation (St Louis, Nashville, Indi), TriBeCa Film Fest (NY, CA, TX). Kilburn Media partnering with Brookfield (TX, MN, NJ).

 

The Drum held a session with Neustar on the Agile Marketing, Analytics Agility and using data to make decisions to optimise against your KPIs in digital marketing - a conversation that resonated with us as we see a trend in our clients across events, Conferences, CRE and experiential, who are all planning on returning with an increased level of analytics in their measurement methodology.

 

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If you need a simple, scalable way of collecting visitor behavior data in any physical space, we’d love to hear from you. Follow us here on linkedin for updates and have a great weekend!



 

 

Meshh Releases New Capacity Monitoring Tech

September 17, 2020.

 

NASCAR Ran Successful Trials of the Feature in the Concourses at Daytona International Speedway Races and will Continue Throughout the Season

 

NEW YORK -- Meshh, the leading global behavioral technology company that helps brands and properties like Michelin, Verizon, US Open, Live Nation and Diageo measure visitor engagement and interaction in their physical spaces, today announced the release of a new “Capacity Monitoring” feature that will complement the company’s behavioral analytics technology.

 

Meshh developed the new “Capacity Monitoring” feature to address clients’ growing requests to enlist seamless technology to closely monitor event capacity in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The monitoring technology compliments Meshh’s existing contactless event technology suite and analytic platform, and can be quickly installed in any venue. Once the client sets capacity thresholds for specific areas of their space, they will receive immediate notifications once an area passes their pre-set threshold and can determine next steps.

 

"We're pleased to be able to provide additional features to our platform to inform our clients and monitor visitor behaviors as live events and venues come back online," said Duncan McIntyre, Managing Director, Meshh North America. "Analytics data for events is more important than ever and our new capacity monitoring tool will assist with comfort levels and operational excellence moving forward."  

NASCAR began testing the new “Capacity Monitoring” technology at its events at Daytona International Speedway in August and will continue to utilize key behavioral data from the Meshh analytics platform as fans return to select tracks around the country.

 

“We are thrilled that our passionate fans are returning to select events but understand that we have a great responsibility to do it safely,” said NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief innovation officer, Craig Neeb. “The tools Meshh has developed provides us with technology to monitor the behaviors of our fans so we can react if needed to ensure their safety, and the safety of our event staff and even teams. Our initial trials to monitor capacity at Daytona International Speedway were highly positive and we look forward to rolling it out as our season progresses.”

 

Meshh Analytics uses passive Wi-Fi analytics technology with a sensor-based methodology to send anonymous visitor behavior data to a live dashboard to measure engagement, dwell, reach, and frequency at live events and experiences. Data is used to enhance the attendee and sponsor experience, provide ROI metrics and inform operational decision making. 

For more information visit https://meshh.com/products/spatial-analytics/

IMAGES FOR USE

Meshh Capacity Monitoring Mobile Portal (click image for hi-res download)
Meshh Capacity Monitoring Dashboard (click image for hi-res download)
Meshh passive wifi analytics sensor (click image for hi-res download)

About Meshh

Meshh provides passive behavioral technology, helping event organizers, venues and brands measure visitor engagement and interaction in their spaces.

We help marketers learn more about how customers behave in real-world environments, delivering actionable insight and assisting ROI measurement.

We're proud to work with market-leading organizations including Michelin, Verizon, US Open, World Rally Cross, Nielsen, Live Nation, Bose, Harley Davidson, CVS and Diageo.

 

Media Contacts: 

Duncan McIntyre, Managing Director North America
duncan.mcintyre@meshh.com

Caroline McGuckian, CEO
Caroline@meshh.com