Category: Press

We are thrilled to announce that Meshh CEO, Caroline McGuckian, has been invited to judge two categories in the Field Marketing and Brand Experience Awards 2023, the Most Immersive Event (mass consumer) category and the ​​Most Effective Roadshow or Shopping Centre Campaign.

Caroline commented, “Judging awards is not to be taken lightly, and I am honoured to have been invited to judge these very competitive categories. They are specific parts of the industry where many of our clients operate, so I was particularly interested in the innovation and creativity in this year’s entries.”

The Most Immersive Event (mass consumer) category requires entrants to show how live and integrated teams brought all relevant aspects of the brand to life for the participants who experience the live brand activity. Events entered in this category will have faced competition for consumer attention on the day or days of the event.

“The scope of work that can be entered into this category is wide, including brand experiences and sponsorship activations at festivals, family days out, holiday days and sports events. They can be large stands or entertainment at shopping centres, performances in public spaces, city centres or parks. But most important for me is the requirement to evidence how successful the activity was in meeting client expectations. Measurement is where I spend my working life, so it will be important to see how the entrants have backed up their creative submission with tangible evidence,” concluded Caroline.

Last year’s winners in this category were:

• GOLD Backlash – Beauty Pie
• SILVER The Circle Agency – Costa
• BRONZE Strata Creative – Polestar
• BRONZE We Are Collider – Waitrose

The ​​Most Effective Roadshow or Shopping Centre Campaign entrants had to show how their work has excelled under at least two of the following criteria: Quality brand representatives and training; quantity and quality of contacts made; targeting; brand awareness uplift; sampling or trial success; brand and customer feedback; extended brand reach; customer interaction and involvement; measurement of results; successful client relationship; shopper psychology; shopper engagement; customer analysis; creative use of space; best practice with venue owner; measures to cut environmental impact; coupon redemption; sales promotion participation; ROI, which is quite a challenge.

Last year’s winners in this category were:

• GOLD REL Field Marketing – Weetabix
• SILVER The Circle Agency – Costa
• BRONZE Gekko – Google
• BRONZE N2O – Tesco

For more information on the awards and to see the full Shortlist, check out the FMBE website – http://fieldmarketing.com/news/fmbe-awards-shortlist-2023-announced/

We are excited to announce the expansion of our international team, with the appointment of Joe Lapreay in the US as a business operation associate and Aakif Nazir in the UK as a product developer.

“From the initial brief to the deployment of sensors and the final report, client experience is a priority at Meshh.” said Caroline McGuckian, CEO of Meshh, “We believe that investing in people is a priority because they are fundamental to delivering an excellent service.”

Lapreay began working at our North American office in September 2023. In his role, he will support our sales and client service teams to ensure they offer the best possible experience to existing and potential clients. Additionally, he will assist the team with post-event reporting and help with deploying Meshh technology in the field.

Aakif Nazir joined our UK team in August of 2023. Prior to his role at Meshh, he worked in the software development tools field for five years. Nazir will work alongside Meshh’s lead developer to improve our behind-the-scenes tooling and reporting platform.

Caroline concluded, “I am pleased to welcome Joe and Aakif to the team. Both stood out as exceptional candidates during the hiring process, and I am confident their expertise and experience will prove invaluable to the Meshh team and our clients.” 

In exciting news to kick off Q4, we are thrilled to announce that our work with Sky has been shortlisted for the 2023 FMBE Awards in two categories: ‘Instore Marketing’ and ‘Evolving Brand Relationships’. 

Our team has been nominated for the ‘Most Effective Instore Marketing’ category thanks to our work with Sky’s commercial team. We were tasked with generating custom reports for Sky in 2022 to monitor foot traffic in physical spaces. These reports gave Sky invaluable insights into visitor behaviour, enabling them to improve performance and enhance the overall visitor experience. 

Our partnership with Sky goes back to 2019, and we are honoured to be considered for this year’s FMBE special award for Evolving Brand Relationships. It’s a great opportunity to look back on our time working together and recognise our achievements.

Caroline McGuckian, Meshh CEO, said, “This is an exciting time for us and Sky, especially so soon after our win at the Retail Systems Awards in June 2023. It’s an amazing chance for us to showcase our relationship with Sky and how it has grown over time.

“The Meshh team would like to extend our congratulations to the companies which have been shortlisted and share our gratitude to the judges at FMBE. We look forward to celebrating the industry’s achievements together in November.”

For more information on the awards and to see the full Shortlist, check out the FMBE website – http://fieldmarketing.com/news/fmbe-awards-shortlist-2023-announced/

We are excited to announce that we have been chosen by Pacific Airshow to deliver data and analytics for its first-ever airshow at Gold Coast, Australia, on 18-20 August, 2023. 

Pacific Airshow director of event operations, Sam Pearce, explained, “Pacific Air Show is all about providing high action and top quality entertainment for its attendees and even the wider local community. Using Meshh technology allows us to monitor the venues effectiveness and in turn keep building an amazing event production year on year for the Gold Coast”  

Our sensors will be deployed throughout the three-day event in 8 locations around the Surfers Paradise beachfront venue. They will measure the effectiveness of the event’s commercial and operational outputs

The sensors will be placed to gather critical metrics for the airshow organisers, sponsors and suppliers, including using traffic over time to measure the Opportunity To See (OTS) for the merchandise/partner activation areas, attendance, engagement and dwell time for the Cali Beach Club, and which gate entrants were most likely to visit the merchandise/partner zone. On a daily basis, and for the overall show, we will monitor and report on the distributed dwell time at specific locations, the movement of those entering the airshow around the show, and how far they travel within the area.

Andrew Stone, our general manager of operations, said, “Pacific Airshow, with its exciting schedule of activities, is expected to draw thousands of families to the Gold Coast for a breathtaking weekend of entertainment. Such events present a valuable opportunity for partners, brands, and suppliers to connect with their target audience. Therefore, enhancing the visitor experience as much as possible is essential.

“The power of spatial analytics lies in the depth of the data. We can report where an attendee’s device was first and last seen by the sensors, their entry and exit points, dwell time and repeat visits within one or over multiple days. This data allows organisers to spend a day with attendees, providing insight into how they engage, behaviour patterns, and how to optimise the experience for both visitors and commercial partners.”

Are you a festival professional looking to gain a deeper insight into your attendee’s behaviour? Or are looking for methods to evaluate the success of activations, sponsors and operations?

Come see us at the Australian Festival Industry Conference (AFIC) on August 30, 2023, at Luna Park, Sydney. Our general manager, Andrew Stone, will be presenting at the AFIC New Product Showcase. In this 1 hour segment, Andrew will demonstrate Meshh’s intelligent data capture technology; showing delegates how passive data collection can be utilised to improve understanding of attendee behaviour at festival and event spaces.

AFIC invites festival producers, directors and managers to learn, share and network through its in-depth conference program, trade show and networking events. Throughout the 2 day event, delegates are able to connect with their industry peers and build connections with suppliers.

The full event program, speaker list and tickers are currently available on the AFIC website – https://australianfestivalconference.com.au/ 

See you at AFIC 2023!

We are thrilled to announce that creative communications agency dentsu has chosen
Meshh, to deliver the data and analytics for the 14-date NIVEA Sun and Cancer Research UK
summer tour for the third year. The tour will reach 13 locations in the UK, including several
Race for Life events and conclude at the Victorious Festival, Portsmouth, on 25-27 August.

Monica Marcjanek, client director at dentsu, said, “We have benefitted using Meshh on the
NIVEA Sun x Cancer Research UK Sun Safety Tour for the third year running. This enables us
to really understand our visitors’ behaviours within our activation space and brand
experiences, allowing us to gain valuable insight such as footfall, engagement, dwell time
and impact helping us to gain a clearer picture of the visitor’s journey. Obtaining this data as
well as the learnings on what works well and what doesn’t enable us to improve our strategic
thinking, approach and optimisation going forward.”

This will be the third incarnation of the tour at which we have supplied sensors; the dentsu
personnel have been trained in their operation, placement for optimum results, and how to
start and end each recording period. The sensors will measure footfall and consumer
engagement throughout the tour, which we will analyse and evaluate for actionable insights
based on three years of accumulated data. This will allow dentsu, Cancer Research, and
NIVEA to quantify and compare the campaign’s success using reliable, credible information.

Meshh CEO, Caroline McGuckian, commented, “Collecting data at multiple events over a
number of years provides a rich set of data from which strong conclusions on dwell time,
engagement and repeat visitors can be made. An added bonus is that we have trained the
dentsu personnel to deploy and manage the sensors, which means that we can focus on our
area of expertise – analysing the patterns in the data and reporting meaningful results and
recommendations.”

“The roadshow has attended a mixture of events each year at varying locations, all of which
provide a wide sample of data from which conclusions can be drawn, from the location with
an event to the type of event. Mapping this onto previous results years helps identify trends
and the impact of marketing messages around skin protection,” concludes McGuckian.

We are excited to announce that our work with Sky won the ‘In-Store Technology of the Year’ award at the Retail Systems Awards on June 29, 2023.

Caroline McGuckian, our CEO, said, “The team at Meshh has always been committed to delivering the best possible solutions to our clients. It is an honour to receive this award and see our work with Sky being recognised by the retail industry.” 

The award was for our partnership with Sky as their footfall measurement provider for 2022. Throughout the year, we have developed bespoke reports demonstrating how individuals navigate physical spaces, providing Sky with valuable insights to enhance performance and enrich visitor experiences.

“Not only would we like to thank the Retail Systems Awards judges for recognising our work, but we would also like to extend our appreciation to Sky. We greatly value the relationship we have built throughout our partnership and are grateful to have had the opportunity to celebrate with you.” Caroline concluded.

With increasing awareness of personal data usage, event attendees are becoming more reluctant to share their information. As a result, event organisers are now looking for new ways to capture attendee information and measure success.

In his upcoming session, our head of insights and analytics, Nick Child, will show attendees how to ‘Unpack The Power Of Passive Data’ at The Meeting Show on June 29 2023. 

At 11:00 AM Nick will be presenting on the Impact & Inform Stage, where he will discuss the importance of developing a broader data-collection mindset and explore alternative ways to collect and interpret passive data. You won’t want to miss this informative session, as Nick will also highlight user cases and share success stories.

To register for your place and to find more information about the event, visit the Meeting Show’s website at https://www.themeetingsshow.com/welcome. 

See you at the Meeting Show!

We believe that data is the foundation of successful events, and now that the festival season is upon us we’d like to share some ideas about how data, and spatial analytics in particular, can help improve the planning, safety, ROI and visitor experience at outdoor events.

There’s a festival out there for everyone, whether it’s music, beer, food, trucks, antiques, or film, the list goes on. But most festivals share some common characteristics – crowds of people in open spaces; zones and areas for different activities including non-public and secure spaces; brand and sponsor support for the event; and peak times for arrival and departure, headline acts, food and drink service, to name a few.

Spatial analytics offers the opportunity to understand and learn from how people interact with the space around them, and festivals can benefit enormously from this technology if it’s used and interpreted correctly.

What is Spatial Analytics?

With the average time spent on mobile devices averaging 3 hours and 15 minutes per day, it’s safe to assume that most event attendees will have their phones on their person. These devices’ powerful yet compact nature unlocks a whole new potential for measuring data.

Spatial Analytics passively tracks mobile devices without needing users to install an app or register in any way, by listening for anonymous wifi and other connection requests. The data gathered is then carefully analysed to understand how people engage with places and provide insights into footfall, engagement, dwell time, frequency, and journey paths. 

How is Spatial Analytics Applied to Festivals?

Spatial analytics is designed to help festival organisers before, during, and after their event, allowing them to:

Improve Event Planning and Space Design

Due to the technology’s compact and easy-to-deploy design, it serves a range of operational purposes as it can be placed in key areas without disrupting the natural flow of movement. 

The data allows organisers to see which areas are receiving the most foot traffic, and how crowds move in the space and inform decisions regarding the layout and location of stands, facilities, and activations within the premises.

Maintain Safety at the Event.

Spatial analytics can start building an overview of a visitor’s experience from the moment they enter the premises, making it an efficient tool to monitor and manage the flow of festivalgoers. By collecting and interpreting data in real-time, spatial analytics allows organisers to see how crowds are moving around an event, what they are engaging with, and identify congestion, bottlenecks, or other issues that may adversely affect safety. 

Demonstrate Value and ROI to Commercial Partners

When investing in an event and/or activation it is only natural to want evidence that the investment is worth the return, but crude overall attendance counts and sales totals aren’t sufficiently detailed to allow for targeted optimisation and improvement. Spatial analytics can reveal important, fine-grained detail about visitor behaviour, including: 

• Audience dwell time with a brand.
• The proportion of passers-by that stopped and engaged.
• The areas the audience engaged with most, and the least.
• The frequency and the total number of return visits

Measuring the Success of the Event 

While success will look different across different festivals, spatial analytics provides the tools to see how people engaged with the event and understand their behaviour. Not only does it reveal which areas performed well, but also provides actionable insights that can be used to improve future festivals. 

The repeatability and reliability of Meshh Spatial Analytics allows for the establishment of festival performance benchmarks and delivers unparalleled opportunities for meaningful comparisons of festival performance over time and across locations.

For more information about how spatial analytics can be used to optimise your next festival, contact us at info@meshh.com.