Title	POLITICO EU REFERENDUM TRACKER
Brand	POLITICO
Product/Service	EU REFERENDUM TRACKER
Category	E03. Innovative Use of Technology
Entrant	DIGITASLBi London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	DIGITASLBi London, UNITED KINGDOM
Additional Company	POLITICO Brussels, BELGIUM
Additional Company 2	URBAN AIRSHIP San Francisco, USA

Name	Company	Position
Rafe Blandford	DigitasLBi	Senior Mobile Strategist
Kate Day	POLITICO	Editorial Director
Ilicco Elia	DigitasLBi	Head of Mobile
David Linnard	DigitasLBi	Technologist
Steve Tan	Urban Airship	Relationship Management

The Campaign

The EU Referendum Tracker used an Apple Wallet pass to deliver content and push alert and notifications to iPhones. It is the first time Apple Wallet was publicly used for breaking news and dynamic content distribution. Once people installed the wallet pass, POLITICO was able to alert them to important new developments and dynamically update wallet pass contents. The front of the pass featured visuals displaying polling results leading up to the June 23rd vote, and then it switched to graphically display voting results as they came in from 382 voting districts. The back of the pass provided summaries and links to POLITICO’s latest coverage, becoming an important source of traffic for its website, as well as a convenient central repository for quick access to the latest stories.

Creative Execution

POLITICO Europe’s EU Referendum Tracker is the first time Apple Wallet was publicly used for breaking news and dynamic content distribution. Development began at the beginning of June and the tracker launched 16th June, one week before the EU Referendum vote. The wallet pass displayed the latest polling results on the front, switching to voting results and analysis as districts were declared. Post Brexit coverage then continued for a few days after the vote. We built a system that pulled in real-time polling and voting results, automatically generating the image used on the front of the pass, and enabled customisation of the text of pass and notification content, which used the Urban Airship Reach product for the distribution and management of the passes and notifications. Consequently, the editorial team could send real-time content and notification alerts, informing pass-holders of key breaking news as it happened, and driving them to the pass which contained continuously updated story links. Therefore, POLITICO’s smaller, but nimble editorial team was able to beat larger its competitors in breaking stories. To promote and distribute the pass, POLITICO linked to a landing page in its newsletter, sent emails to existing readers and launched social promotions on Facebook and Twitter. Direct download links were also available, bypassing registration. More than 10,000 passes were added to Apple Wallet by users in 7 days, each of which received more than a hundred updates. 74% of registered passholders were new readers, not already in POLITICO Europe’s database. One week after voting results, 81% of passes were still addressable, remaining on users’ mobile devices. In a survey of users conducted after the project had ended, the tracker scored an average of 8.48 out of 10, with 95% of people saying they were likely to use another POLITICO product in future.