Deloitte is one of the world’s leading Accountancy, Business Process, Corporate and Tax Consultancies. Global businesses have trusted Deloitte for +150 years to solve complex business challenges. Far less well know is Deloitte’s decade long expansion into digital marketing and the creation of digital experiences for consumers, through the launch of Deloitte Digital in 2012.

Deloitte’s partnership with the USGA blends all these roles – advisor, TV sponsorship partner, and a transformational digital expert. High profile sports partnerships like USGA’s U.S. Open reach key business decisionmakers and create consumer awareness through TV sponsorship. The pandemic’s impact on the championship was far reaching: championship delays, revenue impacts, marketing cuts, and the temporary elimination of spectator / sponsor attendance.

The challenge was to create an entertaining solution that overcame all these obstacles, showcased Deloitte’s exceptional digital expertise, and delivered targeted reach with key decisionmakers, while delighting the sponsoring partner USGA.

Augmented Reality (AR) can turn television broadcasts into immersive experiences that merge the roles of viewer and active participant. In 2019, the Deloitte introduced a new AR App for the U.S. Open that brought users onto three iconic holes at Pebble Beach. The app gave users full control to visualize the holes from all angles, explore US Open history, and gain new ways to follow the action. The app was well received and our USGA partners were delighted by the innovative experience.

This early success became a launching point to devise a truly transformational experience. Every hole, every golfer, and every shot would be brought into a companion app and featured as a technological breakthrough during our 2020 US Open sponsorship. The app prominently featured Developed by Deloitte across all brand touchpoints to reinforce the positioning of Deloitte’s digital expertise with this critical audience of decisionmakers, clients, and business leaders.

Delighting golf fans with an immersive experience was only one of several goals. The pandemic disrupted business, budgets, and sponsorship events. Due to resulting economic contractions and widespread uncertainty, corporate marketing budgets were cut and commitments put on hold. Deloitte’s budget was no exception. The USGA had to both postpone The Open, then proceed without live fans or onsite events.

The pandemic prioritized the need for greater app visibility, since attendance was canceled. Promotion of the app was reconceived, since on-site activations were eliminated (largest source of 2019 downloads). Broadcast television QR codes would link to app stores. A television spot drove demand while demonstrating AR features.

Deloitte’s partnership with the USGA pivoted into an integrated promotional campaign. The app’s technological wizardry and the Developed by Deloitte messaging would drive traffic to Deloitte’s corporate site, press hits, app downloads, and most critically, engagement with key decisionmakers and Deloitte customers.

Expanding the app to cover every hole, follow each golfer, and track every shot meant that app development began soon after 2019’s championship. The data challenges were formidable – integration of third party player and shot tracking data streams, with all these GPS data streams located with the app’s detailed 3D course environment. Real-time championship data was selectively combined by a user-directed AR interface – selecting which golfers and what holes to view. Deloitte teams across the globe worked collaboratively under pandemic restrictions to build this transformational app – and that only summarizes the technical side.

Delivering the Developed by Deloitte message was an integrated marketing campaign that had to be reimagined for pandemic-constrained circumstances, as changing circumstances mooted plans only made a few months prior. Onsite events were eliminated and fans couldn’t attend. A Covid-compliant television commercial showcased the app, tagged with a QR code for one click download.

• Gained +97M campaign impressions for Deloitte (fulfilling a key marketing objective).

• Created +7M app engagements.

• Drove +75K downloads (+72 YoY) and ranked Top 15 in App Store.

• Scalable architecture handled 165k sessions over 14 days, with over 1.6M API hits.

• Ingested and integrated frequent incoming live data streams, up to 10 XML files/sec.

• Achieved unprecedented traffic and demand loads with no downtime and zero security incidents.

Beyond the creation of a breakthrough AR app, this partnership led to Deloitte’s most successful offline exposure to online conversion in Deloitte’s history, driving a YoY 3x increase in keyword natural search and 1.7M video views of the AR demonstration on partner websites. The campaign’s success, increases in Deloitte impressions and AR engagement, is even more remarkable due to the combined impacts of the pandemic and rescheduling led to huge declines in YoY overall USGA U.S. Open viewership.