news release

The Museum of Contemporary Art and Telstra shared a surprise success last week, when they won "The One to Watch" award at the Mobile Marketing Award for their innovative i-mode® based audio tour for the exhibition “Bridget Riley”.

A shining example of the ongoing partnership between Telstra and the MCA, the i-mode tours were used by over 5,000 visitors to the Bridget Riley exhibition over summer. i-mode was used as the carrier of the audio tour, which offered commentary from the artist about each work in the exhibition in i-mode’s interactive and user-friendly format. Around 90% of users surveyed said the format was very easy to use and on the basis of the initiative, 95% rated Telstra an excellent corporate sponsor for the MCA!

Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, MCA Director, said “The audio tour technology is a great example of how the MCA and Telstra are delivering new and innovative ways to provide interpretive tools for visitors to access contemporary art.”

Already a finalist in the category of “Best use of emerging mobile technology”, the partners were overjoyed to win the overall category in which judges chose the campaign that showed the most potential from across all categories. The award recognizes an innovative application which showed promise and potential for future growth, was an ‘industry first’; and which challenged and inspired the industry to develop new and creative applications of mobile.

Telstra’s Head of Pioneers, Mr Mike Robey, said Telstra was delighted to work with the MCA to give visitors to the exhibition a new and innovative way to experience contemporary art.

“The interactive i-mode tour was a world first that showcased the new possibilities of Telstra’s new i-mode mobile phone service. This award is a real honour,” Mr Robey said.

The i-mode audio tour was also a finalist in the "Best use of emerging mobile technology" category which recognized the best use of emerging technology to create new services that benefit the end consumers – in this case the consumer of entertainment services.

The Telstra i-mode audio tour was put together with content by Acoustiguide, and developed on behalf of the MCA by Telstra and HWW Limited. Panasonic contributed to the initiative by providing Panasonic P432i handsets.

Telstra’s objective in developing the initiative was to de-mystify and showcase a practical use of the new Telstra i-mode service with a key target market who were identified as a young and technology savvy demographic. For the MCA it was an opportunity to deliver the voice of the artist as a new interpretive service for Museum visitors.

Surveys of visitors to the MCA and users of the i-mode tour offered the following results:

• 52% of users fell within the 25 – 44 year target demographic.
• 93% of users rated the ‘content’ as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ with 68% of users rating the inclusion of the artist’s voice as “extremely important’.
• 90% of users rated the use of emerging mobile technology to deliver a Museum audio tour as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’.
• 91% of surveyed users rated the ‘ease of use’ of the Telstra i-mode service as ‘extremely easy’ or ‘easy’.
• 94% of those surveyed supportive of Telstra sponsorship of the MCA to deliver the Telstra i-mode audio tour for Museum visitors.
• Entry to the MCA is free as part of Telstra’s sponsorship of the Museum.

i-mode and the i-mode logo are trade marks or registered trade marks of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. in Japan and other countries.