In the latest edition of our online interview series, Martin Moodie speaks to Play9 General Manager Michael Bickers about the company’s first airport project and its plans for “global domination” in the kids’ play zone and entertainment category.
The Moodie Report: Michael, your company recently launched Play9 Kids Zone at Brisbane International Airport’s new terminal with a specially tailored offer for children. Talk us through the proposition and why it’s so suited to airports.
Michael Bickers: Our Play9 Kids Zones are designed for enhancing public spaces – be it shopping centres, hospitals, museums, airports – and providing engaging interactive gaming for toddlers and above.
The proposition for Brisbane Airport was to change the retail journey for the airport’s family demographic and help improve dwell time and retail sales for food & drink and duty free retailers in the refurbished International Departures terminal.
One of our key strengths is that our games can be tailored to a brand, audience and an environment, so, for Brisbane Airport we tailored the Game Pack to an airline experience.
We developed all the content in-house, including design, motion, sound and character design. We created an augmented reality game that placed the kids inside a cockpit, a shape shifter game called ‘dinner tray’ and a highly entertaining speed test game based inside an aeroplane where kids jump up and down in their seats for a bit of fun before they get onboard.
The feedback has been overwhelming and we have achieved Brisbane Airport’s objective of transforming the experience for families who have been through check-in and security control and normally are not in the right frame of mind to casually peruse the duty free or other retail stores.
Now they can relax and family members can visit the retail offerings while the children are entertained by our Play9 double-sided kids zone, which can comfortably have up to ten kids playing at the same time.
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Play9’s projects aim to make the airport experience more enjoyable for families |
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According to Play9, its airline experience ‘Game Pack’ at Brisbane Airport has received “overwhelming” feedback so far |
And results to date?
Brisbane Airport Play9 Kids Zone has exceeded our expectations with amazing results. All our units come with data analytics tools where we capture information as number of interactions (unique sets of eyes playing the games), duration of play, peak times, peak games, average age and gender among other data. The Brisbane Airport unit is recording 15,000+ interactions per screen per month, which is just fantastic.
Any particular learnings?
This was our first airport having worked across 50+ shopping centres in the last 18 months and it was a really interesting process to ensure we tailored our content for the airport and airplane experience. Our shopping centre games are all about driving visitation back to the centre (as our content is unique to each centre and not available online) and increasing dwell time and spend for the centre.
The airport experience is all about improving the customer experience while waiting for flights and ensuring children have a wide scope of games that cater to an array of age groups and remain compelling. We used our experience in similar environments about the correct locations for our units within airports, such as being strategically placed near food & drink and duty free, and how they can effectively drive sales to these businesses.
Tell us about your personal background and that of the company. Who are the owners and what’s the vision?
I have over 20 years’ experience within the retail and shopping centre industry, having worked as both a retailer as well as working in shopping centre management all my life. I worked with Westfield and Novion, and others, on assets such as Westfield Doncaster, Northland and Chadstone Shopping Centres.
Play9 is a subsidiary of the tkm9 group – global specialists in brand and content development, interactive technology and product design. We work with global brands and retailers such as, Westfield AU, UK & US, Coca Cola, Etihad Airways, McDonald’s to name a few. Interestingly, I was a client of the tkm9 group for a number of years, utilising their experience in shopping centres and consumer engagement across a multitude of platforms such as interactive projections and augmented reality Christmas experiential activations. The results I saw through some of these campaigns were staggering.
tkm9 then evolved the Play9 brand, rapidly rolling out Kids Zones globally. We got talking and before too long I had jumped on board to take up the role of General Manager for Play9. Our vision is quite simple: global domination within a multitude of industries for highly engaging interactive play worlds and kids zones.
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The kids’ play zone specialist said its strategically placed units can help to increase passenger food & drink and retail spend |
Success to date?
We have more than 50 Play9 products in the marketplace with a further 100 in the pipeline within the next six months. We have seen our product embraced by shopping centre groups, restaurants, airports and hospitals and are currently working with hotels and museums.
We have recently gone live in England, with a further 30 units across the UK planned for quarter 1 of 2016 and are working on projects in Europe, the Middle East, Singapore, New Zealand and the USA. We genuinely believe our success is still yet to come but most pleasingly we have a product which has been developed over the last three years which is being so wonderfully received across a range of countries and industries.
You’ve said that the high engagement levels for children actually improve the retail journey for adults – and consequently F&B and retail sales. How so?
It is remarkably noticeable in the period after we launch in a new location, through analytics, retailer sales and simply by observations.
Strategically placed, our units change the journey for the adult. Often they may be flustered in managing the expectations and demands of their child/children in a centre or airport, we provide some respite and some amazing entertainment for the kids.
In turn, the adult may decide to refuel (food & drink) and then stay longer (in the shopping centre environment) or visit the retail outlet or duty free store while their husband, wife, partner stays with the children at our kids zone. It changes the mindset and a relaxed consumer is more likely to purchase.
We are even seeing success with stand-alone smaller units near mobile phone charging locations where the adult can get a coffee, check their email, book hotels, update their Facebook status all while the child is engaged. We have business cases showing a clear increase in the time spent shopping and in turn average spend post the kids zone experience.
Your offer at Brisbane is specifically tailored for that location. What’s the set-up and logistics involved here? What does an airport have to do if it wants to have a Play9 operation?
The Brisbane Airport location was strategic and part of the overall objective of the project to improve the airport experience for families. We are on the new lawn, between the restaurant and bars and duty free shops.
The food & drink outlets offer picnic rugs and picnic hampers so the wait to board an international flight is now significantly enhanced, the children are entertained while you have a glass of wine and shop.
The set-up is incredibly simple; we simply need power and approximately 3sq m of space – we are a plug and play solution. All airports need to do is to get in contact with us and we can commence reviewing the best locations and solution for the space. With offices globally we can be live within two months in any airport around the globe.
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A plug and play solution: Play9 says set up is simple, only 3sq m of space and power is needed to get going |
What’s your monetisation model?
We do have a pay to play offer and we have also seen incredible success in having the content, or the kids zone itself, sponsored.
For example, we will be updating the Brisbane Airport content regularly with retailers and even airlines contributing to the development of new content. We are also seeing a number of retailers or third-party brands within public spaces wishing to contribute to the introduction of a kids zone.
What are your views as to how kids are catered for in airports?
I’m a father of two sons who have travelled frequently and it has been quite poor. With international travel they simply are not catered for and the time after check-in can be considerably trying for parents.
We know there is a need for our product(s) and also our full unique play world offerings which we are also rolling out now. I have not seen an airport that has a decent play centre or offering for children; maybe Changi is the best example at present.
We recently met with Heathrow Airport who have footfall of 75 million people, 5% of those being children. That is one example of an airport where the need to cater for children is immense and thankfully we will be part of the solution very soon.
We have also developed a range of play worlds which have traditional soft play enhanced with our innovative technology, ensuring it caters for toddlers up to even teenagers and the bigger kids among us. Motion sensor pinball is an example where the Dads are fighting their children for a turn!
What about other locations? You’re now in Sydney also I believe. International roll-out plans?
Discussions are ongoing with Auckland, Changi, Heathrow, Gatwick, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, San Francisco and others. We believe we will have a presence across at least 20 airports by June 2016.
What’s the secret do you think of your model?
Our experience, body of work and product range means we can meet any challenge currently faced by asset managers.
We have a range of sizes and styles when it comes to kids zones, including tabletop units. We can also provide furniture and accessories to enhance any area that requires increased visitation or an improvement to its aesthetics or trading conditions. We have off the shelf products or can work to client briefs and budgets. Most importantly, we simply get kids.
CONTACT:
e-mail: michael@play9.com.au
Web: www.play9.com.au
