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Alliance to install UK’s first AI Robots

APRIL FOOL: Alliance to install UK’s first AI Robots

This post was published 1st April 2024 7.30am as an April Fool’s Joke.

We have partnered with LeisureBot.io to install AI-inspired customer service robots at our latest development for Vale of Hampshire Council at Thorn Croft Leisure Centre. The £10.4m new build facility will comprise of a 3-storey layout, including 320sqm gym, 3 studios, 25m swimming pool, learner pool and slides, 8 court sports hall, 6 indoor tennis courts, soft play and large café.

LeisureBot.io is initially providing two of its solutions; RoboGreet and RoboServe. The technology has already been successfully trialled in Australia, Portugal, Romania, Italy and Lithuania, and this will be a 1^st for the UK before being rolled out across the rest of Europe in 2024.

Co-Founder and CEO at LeisureBot.io, Sofiya Pollard, comments, “Our vision started 25 years ago but it has been the fast advancement in large language models that has actually enabled us to start delivering our Robo products into the leisure sector. We’re especially proud of RoboGreet that has returned NPS scores of 95+.”

Whilst the company has primarily focussed on automating customer service, RoboServe is being trialled on the tennis courts as a “friend for billy-no-mates”. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Dr Fayo Apollis explains, “Growing up in Greece I often found myself wanting to play tennis but none of my friends were into the sport, so I decided to build my own tennis companion. Early prototypes were unsuccessful with robots shutting down when losing points or arguing line calls with imaginary umpires. We discovered the learning model had focussed on 1980s professional tennis players so we expanded the scope of knowledge and introduced an empathy module.”

With 1,424 patents protecting the technology, LeisureBot.io has been valued at over $1.4bn and is due to enter another round of venture capital funding from interested parties. Alongside its leisure portfolio, Alliance Leisure are exploring opportunities to place RoboGreet in coffee shops across the country which could see one of 30,000 AI baristas serving your next morning cuppa. Trials are currently underway in 3 towns in Lancashire with performance feedback due over summer.

Paul Cluett, MD at Alliance Leisure, shows his enthusiasm for the technology, “We’re proud of our exploration of innovative technologies and this partnership with LeisureBot.io has unlimited potential. As a keen pool player I’m particularly interested in RoboCue that has been scheduled for launch later this year as we explore the resurgence in snooker halls.”

For more information on the Thorn Croft development or to learn about LeisureBot.io CLICK HERE

Learning From PMW Unlocked

From the 5-6th of March, the TA6 and Alliance central marketing teams descended, along with hundreds of fellow marketers, upon the Business Design Centre in London for Performance Marketing World Unlocked.

Their purpose: to learn from some of the brightest mind in the performance marketing sphere. With marketing being the dynamic and changeable beast that we all know and love, it is essential that we keep on top of developments to, in turn, provide the best services for our clients.

With topics ranging from building communities to everybody’s favourite subject, artificial intelligence, the teams returned with a plethora of valuable takeaways. Take a look at some of their highlights below.

Freddy Catchpool

Paid Media Specialist

PMW Unlocked was a great couple of days filled with inspiration, some key takeaways.

Adapting to a cookieless future on Google Ads with first party data now being more important than ever to utilise across the platform. This enables us as advertisers to maintain key targeting, personalise ad experiences, and ensure compliance with evolving privacy regulations, ensuring continued effectiveness across campaigns.

I’m excited to see how AI continues to shape the future of performance marketing with even more adoption of AI around Meta’s advantage plus, Google’s Performance Max and the new adoption of their Gemini generative AI model (now in Beta on Google Ads). Having greater capabilities with machine learning and assisting us in reducing the more manual set up tasks, enabling us to focus more on performance data & optimising account efficiency.

Incrementality testing is becoming more important than ever as the competitive landscape is continuing to grow, keeping the edge over competitors is key. Gathering greater valuable data through testing will allows us to refine strategies, optimise performance, and maximise ROI by identifying and implementing the most effective campaigns – much more testing in 2024!

Emma Kapur

Strategic Account Manager

We were very fortunate to receive a keynote from Ibrahim Kamara, founder of GUAP, who gave a brilliant address on the importance of authenticity and community engagement when it comes to marketing and brand building.

In the fast-paced, 5-second, 240-character world we operate in a first impression has never been so important, and coupled with the increase in AI use in digital marketing, we as consumers can often wonder who to trust. Ibrahim, and others at PMW Unlocked, therefore gave us some really valuable points to consider when it comes to authentic, engaging marketing:

A consistent value exchange between consumers and brands is essential – at a minimum, does your brand respond to Google reviews?
It’s not just about what’s being advertised, it’s who’s behind it. Perhaps some behind-the-scenes content is in order for your next campaign!
Audiences are more likely to trust and engage with content that they feel accurately represents them – we see this all the time in our work, for example, when we advertise using photoshoots featuring real customers as opposed to stock imagery.

James Cole

Head of Partnership

Artificial Intelligence, AI, is everywhere – there’s no avoiding it. We as a team entered PMW Unlocked with a fairly solid understanding of AI, with many of us already using it in day-to-day tasks all the time. However, we left with a much clearer understanding of more ways in which we and our clients can utilise AI to enhance our work and allow us to dedicate even more time to our clients.

Namely, there were some great discussions across several panels about the role of AI vs humans in the world of marketing. These largely boiled down to:

AI functions

Marketing automation
Marketing personalisation
Analysing data
Chatbots and virtual assistants

Unequivocably human functions

Transparency with customers

Decision making using personal insight and intuition or ‘gut feel’
Saying ahead; looking for the next trend and being a trailblazer
Emotions: AI cannot replace the emotive response to advert copy or creatives

Nicola Bromley

Strategic Account Manager

My biggest takeaways were definitely around audience and community fostering. Grace Andrews, Marketing Director for Steven Bartlett & The Diary Of A CEO, shared some really fascinating insights around this. She impressed how The Diary Of A CEO is more than just a podcast, it’s built an entire community, and shared some of the ways in which they built that relationship with their listeners.

One key point made was the difference between an audience and a community: essentially, audiences are consumers we talk at, whereas communities are consumers that we talk with. Whilst it can be uncomfortable, it’s absolutely vital to listen to your users and find out what makes them tick in order to shape your content.

Finally, make content that people actually care about! It might seem like a no-brainer, but how many adverts have you seen recently that have really struck you? Very few brands are in touch with their customers, and it shows. How do you find out what your customers care about? Listen to your them. It all flows together!

TA6 Launch Masterclass Series

The team at TA6 have announced an upcoming Masterclass Webinar series running online on Zoom from the 8th to 11th December from 1.30-2.30pm.

Designed to prepare those working in the leisure sector for 2021, the series covers the following areas:

Sales
Customer Service
Communication
Marketing

Book your place on an invidual course for £25 per person per webinar, or purchase access to entire series for just £50 per person.

Learn More About the Series and Register Your Place

ta6 masterclass series

Coronavirus Update: November 2020

As we reflect upon the implications of the announcement of England’s upcoming national lockdown, we at Alliance Leisure and TA6 are disheartened and concerned about the effects of the ‘second wave’ of the COVID-19 virus on our staff, clients, supply chain, and the health and wellbeing of the wider community.

We are working to continue delivering services and support to members of the leisure sector across the UK, as we were fortunate to be able to do throughout and ever since the first national lockdown.

We are dedicated to supporting the sector, and we continue to encourage our staff to actively help their local communities whenever possible.

Operator Resources

Follow the link below to access the free operator resource library built by TA6, which is updated regularly to contain the most relevant and helpful information and assets for you.

Alternatively, you can contact TA6 if you would like to discuss other ways in which we can help, including planning your comeback campaign.

Operator Resouce library

contact ta6

Coronavirus Update

All of us at Alliance Leisure are hugely concerned by the wide sweeping effect of the COVID-19 virus on our staff, our clients, our supply chain and the health and well-being of the wider community.

We are working hard with all of our stakeholders to continue delivering services in these challenging and unprecedented times.

We will do our very best to support the sector and at an individual level, we encourage our staff to actively help their local communities.

Take a look at the library of FREE tools we are developing. These can be freely used by leisure operators looking to supplement their social media activity.

Day out at the Scottish Leisure Network Group in Edinburgh

Four members of our Northern-based team attended the regional seminar for the Scottish Leisure Networking Group this week held at the prestigious Edinburgh International Climbing Arena. James Foley Commercial Director, Sean Nolan Business Development Manager, Tom Gardner Business Development Manager and John Leaver Head of Marketing, joined over 50 other delegates from 21 organisations in a networking day covering a range of topics.

As sponsors of the network John delivered a marketing workshop with the group which received excellent feedback on the day and after…

“Spoke really well very authentic , humble and engaging”

“Everyone I spoke to took something away from your presentation. Delivered in an easy understandable way coupled with mini interaction sessions to get everyone talking – perfect”

The day was rounded off with speakers from CIMSPA, Spencer Moore, and Debit Finance, Richard Jones.

Alliance to install UK’s first AI Robots

APRIL FOOL: Alliance to install UK’s first AI Robots

Learning From PMW Unlocked

From the 5-6th of March, the TA6 and Alliance central marketing teams descended, along with hundreds of fellow marketers, upon the Business Design Centre in London for Performance Marketing World Unlocked.

Freddy Catchpool

Emma Kapur

James Cole

Nicola Bromley

TA6 Launch Masterclass Series

The team at TA6 have announced an upcoming Masterclass Webinar series running online on Zoom from the 8th to 11th December from 1.30-2.30pm.

Sales

Customer Service

Communication

Marketing

Learn More About the Series and Register Your Place

Coronavirus Update: November 2020

Operator Resources

Coronavirus Update

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