Category: Press

Auto shows are hugely important to anyone looking to build brand affinity and generate leads. Even with the scaled-down events being put on during COVID and likely to continue, you’re looking at thousands of past, present and/or potential customers. There’s a lot of data to be had, but collecting, reporting and acting on it is a daunting task. And with budgets being squeezed and ROI constantly scrutinized, efficiency is more important than ever.

Working with disparate partners who employ disparate systems means disparate data. That’s not efficient. “You’re not able to compare apples to apples across shows and other events,” says Ian Richardson, Limelight’s VP Strategic Partnerships. “And it makes understanding event executions holistically, in any kind of meaningful time frame, nearly impossible… Marketers can’t see how individual assets or entire campaigns are performing until an event post-mortem is completed.”

When it comes to creating and measuring digital activations at events, the four big pain points are: a broken feedback loop, the inability to make informed adjustments on the fly, poor consumer communications and CRM integration issues. Using the auto show as an example, let’s see how Limelight addresses each one.

You’ve got two touchpoints: contesting and vehicle-specific wheel stands. It’s all going great, until it isn’t. But there’s no need to hit the brakes.

ENGAGE CRUISE CONTROL Fixing the feedback loop

After a few hours, you notice the bounce rate for the contest sign-up is high. Turns out most people are giving up after nine questions, and you’ve got 12. That knowledge allows your team to shorten the questionnaire. By Day 2, your submit rate jumps considerably.

“Clients can use Limelight without having to custom code or lean on a development team or several different partners to make changes,” says Richardson. “You can update as soon as there is some downtime.”

SHIFT GEARS ON-THE-FLY Reacting in real-time

The Limelight dashboard is also showing that something is up with the placement of the contesting kiosks. Despite being stationed in high-traffic areas to maximize exposure, few people are stopping. A little investigation reveals that foot traffic is too high; people feel they’re in the way if they stop. The answer: Move the kiosks.

It may not be possible in the moment, but you’ve got the knowledge to act if it is. At worst, you know what to do for the next day or the next event.

“What’s nice is the events team—the actual boots on the ground, the people who are working the event—can see how people are responding, behaving and interacting in real time,” says Richardson.

ACCELERATE CONNECTIONS Creating effective consumer communications

You’re pleasantly surprised to see that the wheel stands are getting a lot of use. Limelight’s branch logic is sending existing customers on one journey and potential customers on another. The software is also generating automated follow-up emails that are personalized and timely, which can mean same day or timed for optimal engagement. That can lead to an open rate often as much as 10 times higher than what you’ve seen versus a logistically delayed send to people who have opted-in to communications, according to Richardson.

“That’s huge, and it makes sense,” he says “Otherwise, a couple weeks later, I’ve forgotten what I signed up for and I could scroll by it as spam.”

OPEN ROAD Solving CRM issues

All the collected information from your activations—including any identifying questions—is also being passed directly to your CRM to update consumer profiles and alert dealerships of leads and marketing to hand-raisers, making it easy for both sides of the business to drive success.

“Often the CRM team doesn’t want to ever log into Limelight, and that’s fine,” Richardson says. “They want to use their system to see the event leads, in addition to web, social and other channels. And the events team doesn’t want to rely on or may not have access to the CRM system. But now they have access to the consumer data and key metrics to see how events are performing.”

YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION

Thanks to Limelight, your feedback loop is humming, your event managers are acting on easily digestible data, your email follow-ups are optimized and all the consumer information is flowing seamlessly into your core CRM in real time.

Congratulations, you’re no longer spinning your wheels.

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. 

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. 

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

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.

TORONTO, June 15, 2021 — Limelight Platform is excited to expand its offerings in the experiential space with the acquisition of Meshh, the leading SaaS-based spatial analytics technology provider, from CSM Sport and Entertainment Holdings Limited.

A powerful complement to Limelight’s active first-party data analysis, Meshh’s spatial intelligence software and GDPR-compliant sensor technology provides the opportunity to understand vast pools of passive and anonymous data. The result is an industry-first marriage of Best-in-Class technologies that provides clients with a holistic view of event engagement and environment data through one intuitive platform—and one vendor.

Meshh brings more than 50 years of collective experience in research, technology, and analytics, enabling clients to compare and contextualize large attendee sample sizes and derive meaningful insights from consumer journey patterns and behaviour metrics.          

With a robust portfolio of Blue Chip clients, offices in London, NYC and Sydney, and a growing geographical footprint in 23 markets, Meshh empowers Limelight to venture further from North America and Asia-Pacific to serve clients in Europe and beyond. Leadership from both organizations believe the partnership will accelerate organic portfolio growth with clients in the sports, retail, automotive, advertising, commercial property and events and exhibitions industries.

“We are incredibly excited about the next stage of our growth fuelled by joining the Limelight family,” says Meshh CEO Caroline McGuckian. “The partnership is testament to the forward-thinking mindset and proactive approach both organizations have taken during the pandemic to emerge stronger and better. With many shared values and clients, it is a natural fit—and the incremental opportunities for our joint offering are already evident.”

“Meshh is the fastest growing, most innovative and exciting company in the burgeoning spatial intelligence market,” says Terry Foster, CEO of Limelight Platform. “Their consumer data capture technology for live experiences is used by market leaders such as Live Nation, F1, NASCAR, BET Experience and London Marathon. We have been keeping a close eye on their global growth over the past few years and look forward to the value they can bring to our clients.”

In addition to new growth, the new Limelight/Meshh offering will help long-standing clients from both organizations deepen customer connections with their brands, products and services through highly relevant, highly engaging experiences. According to Matt Vandrau, Group CEO of CSM Sport & Entertainment, a part of the Chime Challenger Network, “Limelight is a natural fit for Meshh and will be an important component in the next chapter of their growth story. CSM will continue to use both Meshh and Limelight as preferred vendors for our experiential activations.”  

With combined client lists, combined products, and combined active and passive data collection and analysis—accessed by an all-in-one software system—the Limelight and Meshh partnership lays out the roadmap to the future of live events and activations worldwide.

About Limelight Platform

Limelight is a SaaS platform that helps global brands deliver memorable consumer experiences and measure the impact of their experiential marketing while dramatically improving results for companies like BMW, Porsche, RBC, Nationwide, Mazda, Kellogg’s and General Mills.

About Meshh

Meshh is a SaaS platform that provides world class, location based intelligence and interaction solutions. We help event organisers, venues and brands measure engagement and interaction in their physical spaces. Delivering insights to marketers about how customers behave in real world environments so they can deliver richer, more immersive experiences. Meshh is used by forward thinking companies like Tishman Speyer, Nielsen, Diageo, Sky Retail, Lexus, World Surf League, Endeavor and Momentum.

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

For further information: Terry Foster, CEO, Limelight Platform, tfoster@limelightplatform.com; Caroline McGuckian, CEO, Meshh, caroline@meshh.com

June 4, 2021

We’re excited to announce the hire of our new developer Mark Jenkins. Mark brings with him over 13 years’ experience within the media industry; he’ll play an integral role in supporting our Technical Director as we move into our next stages of development. We couldn’t be happier to have him join the team!

We asked Mark a few questions to find out a bit more about him and he didn’t disappoint!

What’s the coolest thing you’re working on right now?
It’s still early days but I’ve had the opportunity to dive deep into the devices at the core of our analytics platform and get the hang of just exactly how they tick. It’s proven to be a great place to start as I have been able to quickly move from the source of data ingress right through to the generation of reports that come from that data and gain a good understanding of the complete process.

If you could visit anywhere in the world you’ve never been, where would you go? 
I’d very much like to see the Richat Structure in Mauritania some day; such a surprisingly large circular formation, can be difficult to believe it’s a natural phenomenon (apparently there are people convinced it’s the ancient city of Atlantis). I’m pretty sure it doesn’t look all that impressive on foot though, an hot air balloon flight over it could be good though – those things are easy to steer, right?

Teleportation or flying?
I guess that depends… If this is commercial travel – flying vs some kind of Teleportation booth that you enter and then zip to your destination in a matter of seconds? As long as I don’t come out of the other end looking like Jeff Goldblum then teleportation has to win, surely.
On the other hand, if we’re talking being able to fly peter pan style vs some sort of Rent-a-Ghost Timothy Claypole pinch your nose and disappear style teleportation; well, that’s a tough choice but I think flying would probably edge out in front.

Can you play any instruments?  
Do Church Bells count? (as large heavy percussion instruments?) I’m a bell ringer and in any other year than the last I’d be spending two evenings a week and Sunday mornings in one church or other making a lot of noise. Trouble is that, generally, ringing chambers are quite small with little ventilation and keeping two metres apart can be impossible. Fingers crossed, we’ll be back at it soon.