Problem - Alpine, the motor sport company and Havas wanted to find an innovative way to engage fans and monitor motor team performance with the exact same device during the French Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Solution - Alpine benefited from a bespoke connected cap for the fans in the stands and a bespoke connected bracelet for the mechanics in the garages thanks to our Rosette acquisition board. The device measured in real time the heartbeat of each person equipped to transmit group averages and enrich data visualizations in the paddocks.
Result - Alpine gave its motor team and fans a totally new experience during qualifying and the French Formula 1 Grand Prix thanks to a new kind of event approach and live biometric data collection during the race.
Problem - Finding an innovative and versatile activation to bring fans and mechanics closer to brand and performance
During the race, the speed of the Formula 1 cars takes the hearts of the fans creating this special atmosphere of fervor. Spectators want to make the most of every moment during the weekend of the race and even if we gave all the participants of Alpine’s experience a cap at the end of the French GP, we needed to deploy our materiel fastly.
During the preparation and the race, mechanics don't have time to waste and they needed our wristband installation to be done easily and quickly. Moreover, it wasn’t possible for the Mentalista team to install our wristband just before the activation because mechanics needed time to focus before important moments.
Distance and movements were also challenging, we had to find a solution to capture every data from fans and mechanics, without knowing in advance how they would move and how far apart they would be.
On a legal aspect, it’s strictly forbidden to collect a person’ heartbeat to use it as an individual data without a written consent. The fact that it was impossible for our client to know the fans and the mechanics we were going to equipped made us work on this project in a specific way.
Solution - Wearable products, bespoke and easy-to-deploy
At the beginning of the project, Alpine wanted us to work only on wristbands but we convinced them to embed our device on a cap for the fans to allow them to brand the headgear and give it as a present to all who participated in this experiment.
Our customized cap and wristband were really easy to deploy, with many tips that allowed us to win a lot of time:
- The battery lasts 8 hours to allow us to install our solution when mechanics/fans have some availability and be safe about capturing the data during all the time we needed.
- Both cap and wristband were easy to handle, no discomforts in the movements during the race for both fans and mechanics. The caps were adjustable without removing our device, allowing people to adjust the size easily.
- To be sure to capture every data we needed from the fans and the mechanics, we decided to use a communication protocol allowing us to have up to 20 meters between wearers of our systems and our terminal. We also deploy our hub to receive up to 20 streams connected to one terminal thanks to our hyperscanning technology.
Result - An amazing double activation, for fans and mechanics
#FeelTheBeatOfAlpine activation in numbers: 40 Fans, 10 mechanics, 3 days of car racing at the Formula 1 France GP. All of these people were equipped with Mentalista technology to capture their heartbeat and enrich the heart of the activation, the datavisualisation. Two heartbeat averages, changing in real time through the race scenario. The datavisualization scenarios allowed people to answer their questions in real time: How do mechanics and fans react? How do the motor team and spectators feel during the start of the race, the pit stops, and the appearance of the chequered flag? The datavisualisation was live in the paddock, available for the Alpine staff, to capture the feelings of an exceptional moment and share it with people.
It was a big opportunity for Mentalista to get a foothold in car racing and deploy its knowledge in brain-environment interfaces. Thanks to the hyperscanning technology of our acquisition board, Mentalista synchronized data acquisition across all connected devices and validated its proof of concept, in an environment with strong constraints such as movements and body adjustment. It was the first step into the acquisition of physiological data in sports competitions and The Alpine team and Mentalista successfully reached the finish line.