Transcript:
Caroline: Hello, Caroline speaking.
Speaker 2: Hi, Allison.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Caroline: Hi Gigi, or Gigi I should say.
Gigi: Hello Caroline, hello everyone.
Nathan: Hi everyone.
Caroline: Hi Nathan.
Nathan: How are we all?
Caroline: Yeah, very well and yourself?
Nathan: Good. I’ll apologize in advance, my phone’s ringing off the hook at the moment. We’re talking to government and AFL at the moment with lots of business moving about at the moment. So my phone’s ringing off the hook at the moment.
Caroline: Oh well, we’ll send positive thoughts for you.
Nathan: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Nathan, it’d be great if some of the AFL use the Sydney Olympic Park.
Nathan: Yeah, I’ve got one team now next week. So we’ve got rescheduled fixtures at Giants Stadium next Friday and Saturday now, and then the following weekend as well. So Darryl’s picked up a couple of extra games, A league as well, talking to a couple of teams there. And of course all this isolation business that was going into Melbourne is also now coming into Sydney. They’ve shut Melbourne down. So Sydney is becoming jam packed pretty quickly, so there’s lots going on today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good.
Caroline: So, I’d just like to welcome you all to today, where we’re doing a quick 30 minutes of the benefits and how you can utilize digital navigation to improve your profitability. So we have a guest speaker today, Gigi from what3words in the UK. And I’ll introduce her in more detail when we get to that section. What I’d like to do to keep it on time for the 30 minutes, I’d like you either to type your questions and we’ll answer them at the end. So if people are in a rush to finish, they can go and the answers will be in the recording that we send out when the session finally finishes. So welcome everyone, I’m in Northwest New South Wales. So with the wonders of technology, I’m looking out in a paddock with sheep and lots of lovely long green grass, which is a change from drought.
Okay, so for some of you, I’m Caroline, I’m the CEO and founder of naveze. After this, reach out and follow our page on naveze in LinkedIn to keep up with all the latest news of what we’re up to. So, I guess the reason for this session is I’ve always felt frustrated when Google would tell me I’ve arrived and I would look around and I had, in fact, not arrived and I had no clue where I was meant to go. So that led me to come up with the idea of naveze two and a bit years ago, with a New South Wales grant and some research from the University of New South Wales. So, I guess the first question is: Why is there a need for further specialization in digital navigation, when we have a dominant player like Google Maps in the market? So Google Maps in itself is a really good example of the value that navigation provides to organizations when they provide it.
Why is it not enough today? That’s because they’re not very good at allowing temporary changes, for pop-up activations, or indeed construction and anything like that. And Google only provides directions on roads. So they get all their navigation route from governments and they use those. So there’s very little information in Google about pedestrian or non vehicular routes. So that provides a gap in the market that makes a great opportunity for people to use the benefits of providing their own digital navigation. So what it will allow you to do is supercharge your navigation for your visitors. It will improve your customer experience, and it allows you to monetize your way-finding. So I’ll put this slide in to give you a little bit of context about the market. So you’ve got the main map apps and like I’ve just explained, what their high level capability is. And then you have tens of indoor mapping solutions.
And then you have naveze, which is the gap between roads and the seat] in the event, if you like. So if that kind of gives you a bit of clarity around how the market sits together. So I won’t go through all this detail, you can read it yourself, but basically digital navigation empowers you to create your own points of interest, create a unique branding or tone of voice for your brand promise in your location or your event. It allows you to connect to people before, during, and after they visit in an easy way. So again, it creates a culture of enablement for your visitors. You can gameify, so one of the things we’re doing with Sydney Kings is we’re allowing you to make your avatar a basketball or one of the Sydney Kings players. So you can make it quite fun. And if there’s a lull in proceedings at your venue or event, you can create digital engagement with your digital navigation to keep people engaged with your brand.
Obviously we’ve talked about the pedestrian gap, how large outdoor venues have an opportunity to provide digital navigation. And again, specialized routes for disabled, walking, private members access that kind of thing. So enough about the benefits, how are we going to empower you today to create your own digital visibility in a free, easy to use way? So digital visibility is creating and defining your own points of interest, and routes and pathways. So what we’re going to do today is cut those two things in half and teach you how to create your own points of interest. So you can do that in Google Maps, you can drop a pin, but as you may know, Google does not allow you to control access to your private data. If you create a pin that’s available to everyone, it is indeed free, but your ability to change them and update them is very limited and you’re vulnerable to Google’s timeliness in accepting a pin and publishing it.
And luckily there’s another tool in the market now called what3words. They are based out of the UK, and it does allow you to create your own points of interest. And that’s what we’re going to teach you how to use today, and that’s where the lovely Gigi is going to help us. So what3words is free, it gives you complete control, it’s fast, and it enables you to put up and take down locations whenever you feel like it. So what I’m going to do is pop out now to Chrome, to their website. And we’ll talk a little about how what3words works. Okay, so can everyone see the what3words website? Yep?
Gigi: Yes I can.
Caroline: Okay. So Gigi, would you like to give us a quick summary of what3words? And then while you’re doing that, I’ll take us to the page that explains how to create a site.
Gigi: Yeah, that’s fine. Thank you, Caroline. So hi everyone. I’m a partnerships manager of what3words, we’re based in London. And basically, the reason our CEO came up with the idea of what3words was exactly the same reason that Caroline was mentioning earlier. So it was like having to Google Maps tell you I’ve arrived, but you haven’t. And I think that it’s particularly relevant to big venues or even just addresses in general often will not be as accurate as we want them to be. Caroline, maybe if you go on the map side, so I think if you click on find your three-word address. What we did is we divided the world into a grid of three meter by three meter squares, and then to every three meter square in the world, we gave a unique combination of three words from the dictionary.
So if we zoom in there, we’re probably going to start seeing some squares. Not probably, certainly we’re going to start seeing some squares, and then every square will have its own three word combination. Yeah, so Caroline, if you zoom in more and then yeah, exactly, we’ll start seeing squares. And then that means that if you want to say for a big venue, for example, we’re working with the O2 in London currently where instead of saying the O2, you just give the exact address of the entrance where you’re getting your visitors to go to. And so that’s essentially the concept, but I’ll let Caroline continue from there. And if there’s any questions about the concept or anything, I’m happy to answer them.
Caroline: Thanks, Gigi. Okay, so what3words, just to run you through an example of what3words, you download the app from the App Store, it’s free. And when you open it up, you type in where you want to add a location. So in this instance, I typed in Qudos Bank Arena, and then I tapped on the screen and you can see here the yellow square. So when I tap on that, what3words gives you the three words it comes up with, and then you click on save and you come over here and you name it what you would like to call it.
Gigi: Yes.
Caroline: Okay. So when you open the what3words app, it comes up with a satellite or a street view of the location you want to look at. So in this instance, I’ve actually typed in Qudos Bank Arena, and then I’ve tapped on the screen on a location on the map that I would like to add a new location of my own.
And then what you do is you come down to the bottom of the screen and you click on save, and you can see it gives you those three words and you give it a name that is what you want that location to be known as. So in this instance, I’ve called it Qudos entry B, security and reception. So once you’ve saved all those locations, you can then pop them into Google or a customized map app, and it will navigate you to those locations. So if we go back and we click on here, this is a user in the UK, I will show you how it works. Okay, so can everyone see the Alexandra Palace website here? Yep? Okay, so if you scroll down, you can see they’ve created a whole lot of locations with what3words. Can you see that? So their Palm Court entrance for example, is button master unit. So if you have that on your website, and then you click on that, this link will take you to any choice of navigation. So we’re going to ask it to navigate us where we want to go
Gigi: The three dots on the right in the middle of the screen, yeah. And then you can.
Caroline: So we click on navigation and this allows you to choose what navigation you use. So we’re going to use Google in this instance, and I’m not going from Camperdown. I don’t know why it thinks I’m coming from Camperdown. So we’ll say London Heathrow, okay. And you can see now it comes up with the directions, so it lists them down here. So, that’s how you can operationalize a what3words location of your own. So if Google doesn’t have the detail you want for your venue or location, this is how you create your own and enable people to find it. Does that make sense? Okay, so we’ll go back to the slides and keep going. So we’ve gone through how to create your own location, and you can see here, I’ve created quite a few for Qudos Bank Arena. And I’ve showed you how an external location has put them on their website and how you can use them in Google Maps, so people can find out how to get there themselves.
So if you have a gap in your navigation, the way we talked about earlier. So a pedestrian gap, Google says you’ve arrived, you look around, when in fact you haven’t. So what we’re going to do now is show you how you can operationalize into a customized navigation like naveze. So we’ll go to the naveze web app, I’m going to share my screen. Okay, so what we can do is we can use your what3 addresses. So this is the naveze web app, and it’s laid out very similarly to Google. You put in where you’re going from, and you put in where you’re going to. So with the what3words addresses I’ve created for Qudos, you can just type them in, which is what I’m doing now. And then ask it to tell you where to go. So you can come down here and say whether you’re coming on the bus or the train, or whether you’re a private member or general admission. So for simplicity’s sake, we’re just going to go with the default option.
And you will find, even though it says no directions calculated, it will actually do it. You can see it’s come up with how to go from this location, which is actually the information desk inside Qudos Bank Arena. And that’s the what3words name we’ve given it. And this is the wheelchair main entry for Qudos Bank Arena. So if you look at it from the perspective of a normal location, so let’s reset and say, “Okay, I want to go from Qudos entry A.” Which is just what we’ve done. We’ll use the box office, get directions. And you can see that you can have either your what3words address, or you can have your own names that we’ve also given in what3words and in naveze, that moves you from one place to another.
So if you need some additional information, so let’s say you need to go to customer services. You can click on the tiles, click on customer services, and it will show you on the map where customer services is. And you can tap on that and get you to navigate to there instead. So, that should give you an idea of how you can operationalize digital locations in a customized navigation app. Okay. So I will now go back to the slides and finish up, and then you guys can ask any questions.
Okay, so we’ve done the demo. So what we’ve done is we’ve showed you how you can define exactly what you want people to find in your venue event or location. And then you allow you to empower your visitors to navigate like a local, so you can make your own world. So one of the things we tried to do when we did the Sydney Olympic Park trial was to create a whole experience of all the different things you can do in one location in one go, and make your own world and a clear brand message and promise for your visitors. So to summarize, digital navigation is beneficial because it gives you digital enablement for place making and activations. And it does that by increasing visibility of your places, spaces, and your people. It improves your customer experience by allowing your visitors to know exactly where they are at any time, and where they want to go with step by step directions. And it allows you to monetize your way-finding by attracting, informing, and encouraging visitor spend, before and during their visit.
So we’re going to talk more about location data in another webinar. So, subscribe to our naveze page in LinkedIn, and you’ll see when that’s coming up. So we’ve got the next steps, you can try to add your own locations in what3words, and you can put the links on your website, just like we’ve showed you those sites in the UK. Or you can go the next step and operationalize with some customized routes. And we’ve got a special introductory offer of two what3words locations and one customized route that you can put on your website and test with your customers. So thank you all for your interest and I’ll throw the floor open to questions. So does anyone have any questions?
Nathan: Caroline, I’ve got a question. So tell me how, if you were in my seat and you had three hotels here in Sydney Olympic Park, what would you do for my hotels? What would you want to do? I mean, obviously we’ve got guests here, we want to show them what the Park’s got to offer outside of going Qudos Bank Arena, there’s plenty of other things to do in the Park. What would you do?
Caroline: So, I think the first thing is, is to understand the people who are in the hotel at that point in time and what they’re interested in. So it varies. So you’d identify your customer avatars and work out the things that they would want to see and do when they’re at the Park. And then you would use that to inform what locations and activations you would create in what3words and put information in about what the activation is doing. So let’s say there was, I don’t know, you’re going to a gardening show at the showground. You could give them a whole lot of meal options, both inside your hotels or an order-in, in the hotel. You could just procure a whole customer experience around, if you like, their hotel room, to the seat at the venue or the event they’re going to, and back again. So does that answer your question?
Nathan: Yeah, no, it does. Have you spoken to SOPA about them using this? Because again, one of the things is trying to activate the park and create some value for the Park. So have they looked at doing anything?
Caroline: Yes. So actually I’ll show you one thing. So they’re doing this Homify project, which I think you’ve been invited to be part of.
Nathan: Yeah.
Caroline: Yep. So we’ve talked about digital enablement of their places and spaces because it’s just such a vast area that you need more than in real life way-finding, you need to be able to inform people easily what’s going on. You do things like geofencing, which is when you’re walking from the train station back home, it’ll pop up and say, did you know that The Locker Room has got a special two for one cocktail today? It gives you the opportunity to amplify and activate offers inside the Park. So they are looking at doing that. They’re still working out what their experience needs to look like. And that’s that Homify project, but they’re very keen.
The Business Bureau, which is, as you know, Stephanie, I’ll show you what we’ve built for her and she’s using. So they want to use naveze, not only for navigation, but to sell the Park as a destination before anyone even wants to come. So we’ve embedded this virtual reality for all the venues. So this is just a virtual reality, I think you’ll have seen before. So you can click on any location and it’ll tell you what’s there. So if we go back, shall we have a look? Have you got much in there for Novotel on this clip?
Nathan: I can’t see your screen at the moment, but is that the virtual tour that they launched?
Caroline: Yep, okay. Can you see it now?
Nathan: Oh yeah.
Caroline: Yep. So what we’ve done as a quick demo is we’ve embedded that film clip that they had made before. So when you’re inside the web app, you can have a look at where you’re going. So it gives you that visual representation of where you’re going, as well as the step by step directions. So you can click on any of them and look at the rooms. Yeah, we’ll go into Qudos, I think, which is over here and it will tell you the meeting rooms. There you go, gives you your 360 view of the venue, like what it’s like inside. So it’s a good selling tool when people are thinking of running a conference, and that’s what Stephanie is using it for at the moment.
Nathan: Yeah, cool. That was it, I’ve said that it looks good. I have seen that.
Caroline: Yeah. So we would do more detailed assets. So when I spoke to Qudos, for example, they’ve got their own virtual reality assets in addition to that. And what we would do is, see how it’s got here, information desk inside, more info, can you see that?
Nathan: Yeah.
Caroline: You would click on that and that would give you more detail. It would load another digital asset, which is just more footage of what that looks like in real life. So it’s really easy to expand the experience and make the business case go from, in-site visits to selling your location way before anyone comes there. So it gives you a double-edged. Okay, so has anyone got any questions for Gigi in adding your own locations?
Speaker 2: Yes, I’ve got a question. So we’re own five Airbnbs out here in the Orange. So it’s about 60 beds, and a lot of the guests coming out, want to know where’s the closest winery, or which is the best road to get to the So just sort of playing around a bit, I was just wondering, some of the words are not, I guess if you’re looking at positive marketing, are not that attractive. Is there any flexibility in being able to change those three words? So for example, I think one of our Airbnbs came up and the third word was splinter, for example. So I just wondered, was there any flexibility in being able to change that word splinter?
Gigi: So you can’t change the words. However, if that square is not appropriate, or it doesn’t work for you, then you can choose the square next to it and still be accurate enough that it takes the visitor to the Airbnb. But you have, let’s say, room for choosing the square that has the best words in this particular case. Important to note that we’ve taken out all of the sort of offensive words that would have been in the language. So you wouldn’t find offensive words or things like that, but if a word isn’t ideal, then you can choose the square next to it.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah. I was looking at that thinking I could use that one, that’s much better words. So then Caroline, how would I then present to the guest, the best winery to get to, or even do their own little wine tour? So is it when they check in, do I give it to them? Or is that something that I give to them prior and have the links? How do you actually present it to them?
Caroline: Yeah, so distribution is really important. You would embed it in any of your communications with your customers. So you can embed it in their booking confirmation email. You can text them the link on the day that they’re checking in, just to remind them that there’s a great tool that will enhance their experience when they’re there. It’s really up to you where you embed it, it’s very flexible. It can go anywhere. You could put wherever you like. Do you communicate with them very often before they come?
Speaker 2: Yes, they ask lots of questions. Particularly now, since, I guess, the international borders have closed down, there’s a much more, I guess, educated, business-savvy person traveling. So I’m certainly getting more questions in the last-