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Project Overview

Everguide is the ever growing, never sleeping digital events guide to entertainment, music, the arts and culture that lives online and in your pocket. Whatever you’re into, whether it’s comedy, gallery exhibits, craft markets, community theatre or Motely Crue, Everguide has it covered wherever you are – Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane or Perth.

Everguide helps cut through the noise to quickly find what’s on in your city. Think of us as your mobile social manager, giving you the information you want, when and where you need it, along with the opportunity to share it with your social network.

Organisation

Lifelounge Group

Team

Dion Appel
Jamie Driver
Luke Lucas
Cinnamon Pollard
Ricky Synnot

Project Brief

Launched in May 2011 and part of the Lifelounge Media Network, Everguide is the ever growing, never sleeping digital guide to entertainment, music, the arts and culture that lives online and in your pocket. Everguide is a free service available as an iPhone app, comprehensive editorialised website and mobile site. An elegant interface, quality editorial content, map integration, and an ability to deliver a personalised experience tailored to your interests and location set Everguide apart from the events crowd.

Born out of the impact social media has had on the way people socialise – both on and offline – Everguide showcases the full spectrum of events on offer and combines these event listings with quality editorial content, social networking and user generated content into a single digital platform that’s curated by a team of in-the-know editors. Everguide uses geo-location and personalisation technology to deliver event information that’s tailored to your interests and locations.

With Everguide, you can:
- Search over 9,000 current and future event listings in music, entertainment, and arts & culture
- Get breaking tour and event news, photo galleries and reviews of recent events
- Personalise your experience by selecting the artists and types of events you want to see
- Keep a calendar of events you’re attending and share it with friends via Facebook & Twitter
- Add events to the Everguide database through an easy-to-use interface
- Follow Everguide on foursquare to get tips on the coolest spots in your city

Project Innovation / Need

In launching Everguide, Lifelounge Group (Australia’s leading youth specialist media company) set out to change the way 18-35 year olds do their entertainment planning. When researching the event guide market, we discovered that today’s online event guides had the following general detractors:
- Pure event feeds with no editorial content or selectivity
- Inability to personalise calendars or content
- Visually unappealing, difficult to navigate
- No integration with or capacity for social media sharing
- Not designed with mobile in mind

Through our research, we recognized the opportunity to use our market knowledge and interactive design experience (see Lifelounge.com.au, popmag.com.au & thevine.com.au) to create the daddy of all digital event guides; one that excels at all of the above points, and especially provides an exceptional user experience on a mobile device.

To that end, we developed Everguide as an iPhone app, comprehensive editorialised website and optimized mobile site. We implemented an elegant interface that allows the mobile user to quickly scan, find and share the events that are most relevant to them, whether by category (music, entertainment, arts & culture) artist or venue. We carefully select the events we publicise, and develop our own news and event content.

Most importantly, Everguide’s innovative personalisation features allow users to select the events they are attending as well as see which of their friends are also attending. Users can also share events with friends through Facebook and Twitter and can follow Everguide on Foursquare to get tips on their local hot spots.

User Experience

On the mobile device, users have three options for accessing Everguide: a mobile-optimised site, a free iPhone app and the full website (for browsing on a tablet like iPad).

When accessing Everguide for the first time, users are asked to register a location, so only events relevant to their city are presented (as well as national festivals and events of interest). Users then register to create a personalised profile and calendar. Everguide’s comprehensive database allows users to select the artists, venues and types of events they prefer, and those selections are reflected in delivered content. Users can share the events they are attending through Twitter and Facebook.

On the iPhone app, users are presented with a home page screen that allows them to select from the following:
- Events: a comprehensive event listing for their location
- Attending: a list of events they’ve indicated they are attending
- Popular: the events that are trending in a user’s location
- News: the latest event news
- Photos: a dynamic listing of photo galleries from recent events
- Profile: customization preferences (events & genres)
- Location: allows the user to change their location (helpful when traveling to another city)

Everguide has an elegant user interface that highlights three categories of events – music, entertainment and arts & culture – and represents those categories though color, which is reinforced through the app/mobile site. A scrolling calendar in the iPhone app allows the user to quickly change the date to see what’s on in the future.

Project Marketing

The Everguide brand essence is to recommend great events to socially active young adults and allow them to share their experiences across any internet connected device, anywhere and anytime. Our brand essence is to package up the feeling evoked from experiencing the ultimate, memorable gig/event. The brand conjures up the excitement for what awaits this weekend, the association and anticipation to meet up with your favourite friends and have the greatest weekend on record. Our audience is sociable, in touch, tech savvy and in-the-know looking-for-a-laugh and direction on the hottest events.

Everguide’s strategy is to be at the centre of the entertainment planning process, the experience and emotions associated with events and everything that surrounds it, including our own core audience’s personal characteristics.

To that end, we have developed a fully integrated PR, online, mobile, print and outdoor marketing strategy:

- Mobile advertising & mobile marketing (SMS, QR codes)
- Digital outdoor university campus campaign
- Media and blogger outreach
- A weekly newsletter, customized to the user’s location, with up-to-the-minute event listings, news and photo galleries
- National rock poster paste-ups
- Street press advertising
- Digital display advertising both within the Lifelounge media group and with relevant media sites (like Nova radio)
- Radio advertising across
- Social media presence (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare)
- Facebook advertising & Google AdWords
- Competitions

We also engage in cooperative marketing campaigns with our advertising partners that include some of the above media and delivers additional value to our users.