We increased fan engagement for AFC Bournemouth
A chatbot personality which interacts with fans through emotion recognition and intelligent conversation
The Challenge
The ambition behind CherryBot was to create a matchday experience that brought together a passion for AFC Bournemouth with the potential of emerging technology. The opportunity was to capture the drama, emotion and energy of live football in a way that felt interactive, entertaining and shareable for fans. At the same time, the experience needed to go beyond novelty — giving supporters useful content, encouraging repeat engagement, and standing up to the scale and unpredictability of matchday conversations.
Fan Engagement
Create a matchday experience that captured the emotion and energy of live football
Technology
Use emerging AI technology in a way that felt engaging, useful, and fun for fans
Performance
Deliver an experience that could handle high levels of interaction and unpredictable fan questions on matchday
What We Delivered
Working with Microsoft’s AI and chatbot technology, we developed CherryBot as an interactive fan experience hosted on Microsoft Azure for matchday scalability.
At the heart of the concept was Microsoft’s emotion API, which analysed uploaded selfies to detect facial emotions and respond to fans accordingly.
We built engagement around this with a selfie competition, Man of the Match voting, match highlights, FAQs, store links, sponsor content for Umbro, and lighter-touch fan features such as chants and Easter egg videos.
The experience was delivered through Facebook Messenger, allowing fans to interact with the bot in a familiar channel throughout the match.
Ahead of launch, we carried out extensive testing across the agency, the club, the university, and wider friends and family groups to prepare for the variety of fan questions and interactions.
The Result
Users
More than 1,150 unique users
Messages
Sending over 19,200 messages
Impressions
3.2 million social media impressions from launch to matchday
Rob Mitchell
A lot of hard work went into creating and implementing CherryBot at the BU Big Match, and I am delighted at the response from our supporters. As a club we are always looking to embrace new and emerging technologies and to have so many people interacting with it, in the form of questions and selfies, can only be a positive sign.
How We Work
A proven process that delivers results, from discovery to continuous improvement.
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