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Project Overview

Everguide is the leading digital events guide covering music, entertainment, the arts and culture across Australia’s capital cities. Online and mobile, Everguide is your always-on event assistant, helping you plan, enjoy and share the anticipation and excitement around the entire event experience. Whatever you’re into, whether it’s comedy, gallery exhibits, craft markets, community theatre or Radiohead, Everguide has it covered.

Everguide helps cut through the noise to quickly find what’s on in your city. From planning to attending and reliving choice events, Everguide’s news, reviews, interviews and photo galleries make sure you never miss a moment.

Organisation

Lifelounge

Team

Stacy Adams
Dion Appel
Andrew Clarke
Tim Fisher
Anna Horan
Daniel Johnson
Sophie Kalagas
Jim Read
Ricky Synnot
Andy White

Project Brief

Launched in May 2011, 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 set Everguide apart from the events crowd.

Everguide is an innovator in the field, combining compelling content with the most comprehensive database of 85,000 national events and 8,000 venues. Each event on Everguide is entered by Everguide or by a venue through Everguide Promote, meaning our users get listings that are relevant, complete, and accurate. Everguide mixes 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.

Online. Mobile. Social. Everguide delivers a personalised and unique consumer experience unmatched in Australia.

With Everguide, you can:
- Search over 85,000 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 (Everguide Promote)
- 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 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; specifically, one that 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

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). Users can then 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 screen that allows them to select from the following:
- Events: a comprehensive event listing for their location
- Guides: curated events and content around a particular theme, i.e., summer music festivals, spring racing, or live music
- Nearby: a list of events occurring closest to the user
- Articles: latest event news and interviews by Everguide editors and contributors
- Reviews: latest event reviews by Everguide editors and contributors
- Galleries: a listing of photo galleries from recent events
- Profile: customization preferences (events & genres)
- Members’ Lounge: access to competitions and other deals exclusive to Everguide members

Everguide has an elegant user interface that highlights three categories of events – music, entertainment and arts & culture. A scrolling calendar in the iPhone app allows the user to quickly change the date to see what’s on in the future. Users can also search for events, see what events are the most popular and highlight which events they are attending.

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, anytime. Everguide embodies the feeling evoked from experiencing the ultimate, memorable 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 pre- during and post-event buzz.

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 campaigns
- 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
- Print advertising in publications like Frankie, Smith Journal, and Triple J Magazine
- Digital display advertising
- Social media presence (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Pinterest)
- Facebook advertising & Google AdWords
- Competitions

We also engage in strategic partnerships with key media and event holders, such as Nova FM, City of Melbourne and Openair Cinemas, to further enhance our users’ experiences with Everguide.