Customer stories


America's Cup Louis Vuitton Media Centre

FileMaker is a winner at the America's Cup Louis Vuitton Media Centre

Paris-based luxury goods house, Louis Vuitton, has had a long standing relationship with the America's Cup and back in 1983 they decided to formalise the relationship by presenting a trophy, the Louis Vuitton Cup, to the winner of the Challenger Selection Series. Since then, it's become well known that "to win the America's Cup, one must first win the Louis Vuitton Cup.”

Since the event is so prestigious and is covered by the world's media, the America's Cup Louis Vuitton Media Centre, the media centre in Auckland for both the Louis Vuitton Cup (Challenger series) and the America's Cup, not only needed to manage the influx of media attending the event but also needed to disseminate information quickly and efficiently to those journalists.

Thanks to technology like FileMaker Pro, the America's Cup Louis Vuitton Cup Media Centre has been able to keep the world's media informed at all times of all the action on the water. In fact, the media are sometimes even more informed than some of the racing teams themselves, giving journalists the opportunity to file their stories while some of the racing is in progress.

With up to 5,000 international media contacts stored in the America's Cup Louis Vuitton Media Centre's FileMaker Pro database, and many of them flooding through the media centre with last minute questions and requests for interviews, the Media Centre knew it had to have the best administrative package behind it to ensure every press query could be handled with accuracy and speed. The Media Centre realised that, in effect, there really was only one option for a database - FileMaker Pro.

"FileMaker Pro is integral to almost all our operations for the media centre,” says Maria Ryan, America's Cup Louis Vuitton Media Centre. "With FileMaker Pro all our contact information is centralised so we are more efficient. At a time when information is required on demand, FileMaker Pro gives us a fast application which integrates well with our other systems.”

Ms Ryan says that in the past, there was no centralised data source at the media centre, which meant that a number of tasks that FileMaker Pro takes care of now, previously had to be performed manually. With nine international challengers, from six different countries, this greatly impacts the media centre.

"With FileMaker Pro the media centre is more automated now, the operations are completely streamlined which in turn has led to greater efficiency, allowing us to be able to instantly find the names, numbers and local contact details of specific groups of press,” Ms Ryan explains. "With FileMaker Pro I'm also able to use that information over and over again in conjunction with other essential records already stored on the system, allowing our staff to quickly generate full reports about the media who have been accredited. It's as flexible as we want it to be.”

Another advantage of having FileMaker Pro installed on the media centre PCs is that all the press have been registered via an online accreditation form, from which a photo ID badge can be generated.

"For a busy media centre like ours, having a journalist accreditation set up like this enables us to perform two tasks with just one action. For instance, while we generate a photo identification badge for the journalist, we can save that image on FileMaker Pro at the same time. This enables us to call up a journalist name at any time, and up will come his/her photograph and other relevant details. It certainly does save us time and helps with efficiency,” continued Ms Ryan.

Offshore Challenges, a Sports Marketing Company based in the UK, was the group initially called upon to help develop a robust and dependable FileMaker Pro system specifically for the needs of the America's Cup Louis Vuitton Media Centre. The development process took only six weeks, including two weeks where the English company worked in New Zealand to implement the system.

"We've seen how an organisation can really benefit from streamlining database information,” continues Ms Ryan. "In the business we are in, we need to be able to offer quick, accurate and immediate support to the international press and FileMaker Pro has allowed us to be more responsive to their needs and wants and provide information on demand. We're really grateful that we have FileMaker Pro in place as it allows us to consistently offer first class, efficient service to the press.”

While one can ensure that FileMaker will win every time in the efficiency time saving stakes, we certainly couldn't guarantee whether Team New Zealand would be the first past the post again at the America's Cup, and lucky for us we didn't guarantee that!


Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • Thanks to technology like FileMaker Pro, the America's Cup Louis Vuitton Cup Media Centre has been able to keep the world's media informed at all times of all the action in the race for the America's Cup.
Industry
  • Small Business
  • Travel/Hospitality