THE BRIEF
For those of us not in the know, Online Poker has been outlawed in the US for the past few years. But last year all that changed as a few states including Nevada legalized it again. A startup Ultimate Poker wanted to unseat perenial favorites like PokerStars and beat them to the Nevada market while redefining the online Poker experience.
THE PROCESS - CASTING A WIDE NET
Call me old-fashioned but we started with understanding Poker players
PROCESS - DEFINING THE AUDIENCE
We then started defining the audience
PROCESS - ANALYZING THE COMPETITION
STRATEGY AND USER EXPERIENCE
We saw many parallels between FPS gaming and Poker playing. We saw how digital footprint of most poker brands were still very much in their brochureware phase. We knew from our experience with gaming and listening to poker veterans that if we wanted to differentiate our clients we were going to have to leverage the digital web as more than just brochure and make engaging and utilitarian. In other words make it a second screen to the poker game.
The final phase was all about leveraging the various touchpoints towards utility + engagement. Both entertaining and making users better poker players.
Strategy wouldn't be complete wihtout some innovation. In this case, to simulate the excitement of tournament play, spectators would be visualized via avatars with their moderated comments and emoji reactions visible to all players. Not only would the stakes raise but so would be the thrill of it all knowing how many viewers were actively cheering and watching the unfolding battle.
CREATIVE
It goes without saying that working with an extremely talented design team goes a very long way. Phase 1 below
