Tennis fans are bombarded with statistics and data about players. Rather than add to this data-deluge we set out to create something that would cut through it: just the right bite-sized pieces of information that would provide fans immediately relevant insight to the game they were watching. If these data nuggets were immediate enough and interesting enough they’d achieve our objective: fans would share them onward. But being interesting *in real time* posed a challenge: how could we work quickly enough for our output to have the currency of immediacy necessary to drive sharing?

Position IBM as a leader in the Big Data & Analytics space with the business-to-business audience attending the US Open, while improving the fan experience. Drive social sharing around IBM’s sponsorship of the Tournament.

We summed up the on-court action in data-vizualizations shared on Instagram less than a minute after each set ended. To get them out in real time we embedded designers and animators behind the scenes at the US Open. An algorithmic workflow allowed us to create custom videos with bespoke animations, colors, and music for every set. To accommodate unknown variables, we pre-created several unique animations for each of 10 stat categories. Next, we introduced 6 color palettes that could be rotated around the design on the fly to create an endless number of combinations.

The datagrams we created were shared through the @IBMSports and @USOpen handles generating over 7MM impressions. Over the course of 5 days our posts received over 170,000 likes with each post receiving an average of over 1000 likes.