Allied peps up pubs with video bonanza

After the success of Fantasy Park last year, Allied Domecq asked multimedia company CHBi to take the Pubnet initiative a stage further by adding a video facility. Paul McCann looks at what Xchange can offer the uninhibited pub-goer

If you hate Blind Date and detest TV sets in pubs, then you had best avoid Allied Domecq theme pubs where a trial, which starts this week, will seek to combine the two in the UK’s first pub videophone network.

Allied Domecq is launching Xchange, the second stage of its Pubnet system, in seven pubs in the South-east. Pubnet got off the ground last year (MW October 6 1995) with kiosks in nine pubs, linked to each other by an ISDN line, which allowed customers to play Fantasy Park, a fantasy football game against each other.

Using smartcards that could be credited for cash, 500 players took part in the game playing in a national league and individual pub leagues. The kiosks also included an up-to-date football quiz that rewarded winners’ cards with cash.

The strong take-up of the game convinced Allied Domecq, and the multimedia company that developed the system for it, CHBi, that the target market of 18 to 26-year-old C2s was not intimidated by the machines or the smartcards.

Allied then asked CHBi to go a stage further and develop the facility for customers to see, as well as talk to, each other in different pubs.

CHBi was founded by marketing people rather than techno-heads and implemented the videophone concept with the aim of adding value to the pub experience. The challenge is to get them used rather than to get them working.

“The idea is to add a benefit to the existing social experience of the pub,” says Mike Beeston, director of CHBi.

As the videophones are targeted at young people a logical selling point was sex.

In true Blind Date tradition, Lust In Space is to be the flagship service on the system. It will allow members of the opposite sex to eye each other up over a jerky video link. In a jokey on-line forum they can match up characteristics, answer quiz questions together or simply chat.

As with Fantasy Park, users pay for the service with a smart- card that is credited at the bar.

“It is not about individuals playing games or one-to-one communication – it’s about interaction and group participation,” says Beeston. So, where possible, the interaction will be displayed on a bigger screen in the pub.

Other services will include V-mail, a service where customers can record and send messages to other registered users of the service. It can then be accessed at any time with the smartcard. Otherwise it can be used as a straightforward videophone in a service called Livechat.

For the more extrovert – read drunk – there is a facility to record jokes or songs which other users vote on and put forward for a national final where they can win prizes.

Lust in Space will cost 2 for five minutes of interaction. Livechat will cost the caller 50p a minute and

V-mail will cost 50p to send the recording. It will be 50p to record your 20-second joke or song and 10p to see and vote on others’ efforts.

At the trial stage, the systems will be in seven pubs in the UK and one in Sweden and the extension of marketing benefits will remain limited to a sponsorship of the service by Allied’s Tia Maria and Beefeater brands.

However, in the future there is potential for linking the system to point-of-sale promotions and research. While there will be no data capture from the registered smartcards, their exchanges will be recorded allowing the system to know a user’s preferences and target promotions at them.

“The system will provide three streams of revenue,” says Beeston. “It will add more value to the social experience and encourage more footfall in Allied’s pubs. There is direct revenue from the users of the service and, finally, its use as a marketing medium.”

The system is still at an early stage, but if everything goes well it will have rolled out into a few dozen pubs by the end of the year.

If you hate TV in pubs, the ones to avoid will be Allied Domecq Leisure’s Firkin and Scruffy Murphy’s chains. But if you’re looking for a tipsy partner and are scared of rejection in the flesh, they may just be the place for you.