Case Study on Best Practice in External Marketing Communication

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1 Case Study on Best Practice in External Marketing Communication Case on Teqball Written in May, 2015 By the Hungarian team Éva Drahos Zita Polyecskó Brigitta Szegedi

2 Table of Contents Introduction of Teqball... 4 What makes Teqball an entrepreneurial company?... 5 How innovative are they?... 5 What makes Teqball an example of best practice with regards to external marketing communication? How are these practices implemented?... 8 How is Teqball utilizing the new communications features?... 9 International issues... 9

3 Company 3: International market focus and on the market since 1 to 2 years The Teqboard with the two founders

4 Introduction of Teqball Teqball was invented by Gábor Borsányi and Viktor Huszár, two very close friend. Teqball is a new sport equipment and a new sport based on football. The equipment is a training tool for both professionals and amateurs to develop their technical, concentration skills. It started out as a Kickstarter campaign and is a prime example of Hungarian innovation. The history of the idea has begun 14 years ago. At that time, Gábor Borsányi played football on a concrete ping-pong board along the shores of Lake Balaton and it bothered him that on one hand it was fairly dangerous, on the other hand the game was not really enjoyable through this. The young man, having been seriously dealing with football, decided 3 years ago to realize the ideal football board, calling for a new sport to life. He started with his neighbour Viktor Huszár to develop the special ball game, requiring little space. Gábor Borcsányi was the creative, Viktor Huszár was the technical innovator. As a result of their common work, the Teqboard, the basis of Teqball sport, known in its today form, has been completed by now. It has been developed with a scientific approach after years of mathematical and physical calculations and empirical tests. They needed a lot of tests to hit the perfect size. Most changes have been made to the feet and during the stabilization. The composition and the size of the mesh have also changed. All the elements of Teqball were designed in a way that the ball always bounces out to the players. This forces the players to handle and control the ball every 2-3 seconds. As a result, a very high number of touches can be reached by the players within a very short period of time. There were many difficulties at the beginning. First of all, the biggest difficulty with Teqball was how to protect the idea in a way that no one can copy, no one can make 5 cm longer or wider or shorter Teqball table. But they found the right intellectual property managers. So, they outsourced everything which is out of their

5 scope of knowledge. They bought the best patent managers and designers, who can design the actual outlook, trademark and figurative logo. The world premiere of the sport was at the Telekom-Teqball stand of the Volt Music Festival, where visitors interested in the sport could give it a try. It shows its expected popularity that during the Volt festival it has been rotating without stopping, everyone wanted to try it. What makes Teqball an entrepreneurial company? How innovative are they? The goal of the inventors and developers of Teqball has been to make a new form of the "global game" available for everyone at any possible location, meanwhile, supporting the football industry by creating an innovative skill development tool. Teqball brings out the best parts of football. It helps developing the skills of both recreational and professional players; at the same time, it is perfect for reducing rehabilitation time after an injury. The dream of the inventors of this modern game is to bring real football into people s homes. It can be played anywhere any time by all regardless of age and gender. They recommend Teqball to all people loving sports and football with pleasure. But professional football players, junior academies can also well build the use of it in their training program. While they say that Teqball is simple enough even for football novices, Teqball boards can also be used to play Teqtennis (basically table tennis played with real rackets and tennis ball) and Teqdodge, which brings back the excitement of 6th grade dodgeball without the physical and mental anguish.

6 To take this game a step further, one can purchase an optional device called the Teqbox together with the Teqboard. Viktor Huszár designed the Teqbox, which is built to calculate all aspects of the players game, such as speed, position, acceleration. The Teqbox is a highly technologically developed device that automatically tracks ball and player movements during a game. It is a combined package of motion sensors, cameras and a powerful computer system that can be installed in any indoor space. It helps to enforce rules, evaluate scores and assess player skill development. Using this data, players can track their level of progress and improvement every time they play. They financed the manufacturing of the first prototypes with own resources and with loans from friends. They intended to realize the development of the software and camera system of Teqball by community financing. According to the experience of Viktor Huszár this form of financing already popular abroad is still in its infancy in Hungary. People are very suspicious in Hungary, they would like to take immediately, they have paid for. After all they chose the Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform, where they were listed as a London-based company. For Teqball, Kickstarter gave the first exposure, their video went viral and an investor group found them here, as well. After about two months they cancelled the Kickstarter campaign as requested by their investor and started to develop the project to their target audience. The idea isn t to replace football as the preeminent testing ground for the world s athletes, but to instead give football aficionados a new casual sport to utilize and test their ball control skills without the number of people or the feats of physical strength required for a proper game of footie. The great advantage of Teqboard is that it has place on beach, in park, school, hotels and in addition to football, it is possible to play Teqtennis and Teqdodge. So even the whole family can use it. In case of Teqball there is no need for professional football knowledge, it can be speedily learn and people can soon feel the pleasure of success. But, this is not just for playing while you have guests over, it can also be used as a key training tool and practice method for coaches and soccer players around.

7 They also involved world-famous football players and coaches to further develop the rules of the game. Teqball has won the Oscar of designers, the Red Dot award. The Red Dot Design Award is an international product design and communication design prize. The game was also a finalist for a 2015 ISPO BrandNew Award and it is an ISPO Recreation Award Winner. ISPO honors the most exceptional sporting goods. The people at Teqball reinvented the ping pong table to suit the everyday soccer fanatic. Actually, you combine two Olympics sports (football and ping pong) involve a little bit of volley ball and basically you got Teqball. So, Teqball after all is innovative but the idea is so simple, that it was always in front of everyone, people were all aware of these sports, however no one ever had the courage and the engineering knowledge. It s probably because a ping pong ball is only 2 grams, a football is on the other hand 450 grams, two hundred times more, so, you have to work a lot on the actual industrial design, the bounce rate, bounce sound and every aspects of the physical board to make it work.. The table and Teqboard are a patented design that enables the ball to bounce of controllably and reach each player with ease. The net, which is not really a net, is made of polycarbonate/plexiglass that makes sure that the game is fair at all times. Teqball is a Hungarian invention, but an international concept, a global product. So the company needed something which makes Teqball authentic, they needed a premier league which makes you immediately understand that this is used by the most professional people, as well. It is difficult to reach these people. First of all, you need good English, knowledge of football, networking capital, you have to have the connection to these people and the most important is to have the product which convinces these people that it is worthy to talk to you. These guys are in world football for years and you need to show something new. And Teqball has met the threshold, Teqball is actually new to these people. That s why Teqball is an innovation and has the right to even be intellectually patented, because after all it something no one ever came up with.

8 After careful and through planning and consideration, the goal of the Teqball team is ambitious. Dream of the founders is that the Teqball game itself spreads and o becomes an Olympic sport. The business expectation is that the product cycle should be around 6-8 years, they have many more ideas to come up with more and more inventions and developments. They want to create the biggest sport innovator company of the world. They have many ideas for basketball, tennis and so on, but first they focus and the primary goal is to make Teqball a widely accepted popular game worldwide in the next few years. What makes Teqball an example of best practice with regards to external marketing communication? How are these practices implemented? The Teqball website, media appearances, event participation in the Hungarian sports world are almost exceptionally well organized and professional. During the development, the team has approached several globally known football figures, which helped them to go public with the project. Henk ten Cate, who has 25 years of coaching experience formerly an assistant coach at F.C. Barcelona and Chelsea F.C has commented about Teqball: "It's a very good promotion of football. Without even knowing you are training, you are training and in a very pleasant way." Multiple Spanish La Liga champion and UEFA Champions League winner Ronald Koeman and EURO 1988 winner Erwin Koeman have both been impressed by Teqball as well. Ever since they introduced Teqball on Kickstarter, the sport has become immensely popular, even celebrities are endorsing it. According to Shane Black, the director of Iron Man 3, Teqball is the future of keeping your kids fit. Several football champions are in favor of the sport as well. Like Ronald Koeman, top goal scoring defender in the world, said: Teqball is a very easy exercise. It s not difficult, everybody will understand this. And it s a good exercise to be a more technical player.

9 After the world premiere of the sport at the Telekom-Teqball stand of the Volt Music Festival, the Telekom-Teqball duo went on to tour the major music festivals of Hungary in order to further spread the word of this innovative and exciting new sport. The first Teqball competition was also organized, with the final hold at Budapest s Akvárium Klub.. The Coca-Cola University Teqball Cup was on SportKlub, which is one of the biggest sport channels in Hungary, but Teqball has already appeared in the national news, as well. How is Teqball utilizing the new communications features? Teqball is mostly an online, social media attractive innovation. They are present on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Teqball has its own official YouTube channel where they promote the game with world famous players, coaches and celebrities. The rules of the game are also explained and demonstrated in videos. There are YouTube views, 587 subscribers, hundreds of retweets, and more than hundred thousand articles from all over the world. You can record your Teq moves and submit the video to the company. The best shots will be published on the website and the top performing players will be invited to the first Teqball World Cup. International issues Teqball is an international product. Hungary does the research and development, it has an operative company in Dublin, Ireland, and the IT management is in Luxemburg

10 Within 8 months they received more than 300 applications for distribution from 85 countries. Internationally people want to make money together with them by selling and renting out the table, organising sponsor events, tournaments. The main target markets are those countries which are more developed in term of football. These are Germany, Spain and surprisingly most of the visitors are coming from the USA. Youth soccer is huge in the USA, they see the potential of the three Teqball sports together, moreover they have the space and the purchasing power. The company is making the USA launch later this year..

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