The app used the content from the printed Official Tournament Program as a base, then added a scrolling canvas filled with live, real-time data driven widgets, giving fans fingertip access to match scores, news feeds, highlight videos, Flickr photostreams, celebrity tweet streams, weather updates, ticket sales, match schedules, entertainment lineups, attendance figures and more.A tournament board visualised all the real-time public twitter streams to create a picture of fan involvement, while a digital scrapbook allowed fans to collect, arrange and share their favourite tournament moments. The highlight for many users turned out to be the digital autograph page, allowing stars to sign with their finger directly on to the iPad screen.PR and social media were used to create initial awareness, yet the app reached the No 1 position on the paid sports app in the Australian and US iTunes stores within two weeks of going live.

The app generated not just awareness for the brand (App of the week in both the Australian and US iTunes stores), but in what must be highly unusual for a piece of marketing-driven media, actually generated it’s own revenue stream No 1 position on the paid sports app in the Australian and US iTunes stores for 3 consecutive weeks).Importantly for IBM, the bulk of the unsolicited media coverage (traditional and social), as well as at-event audience feedback, highlighted the innovative use of data in a business context – an absolutely key objective for this, and indeed every, IBM campaign.