Award-Winning Success for a Strategic Agency Partner
Creative technology agency whiteGREY has a simple yet powerful ethos: Tension creates extraordinary.
It’s a viewpoint that’s set the agency apart since its founding, and by introducing diverse perspectives, whiteGREY continues to create tension and arrive at the extraordinary for a wide and impressive portfolio of brands and organizations around the world.
The Australian arm of GREY, whiteGREY is also part of WPP plc, the world’s largest communications services group, with 114,000 people working across 100+ countries.
But even with those familiar roots, whiteGREY has made a distinctive name for itself—the multi-award-winning outfit has racked up some of the world’s most prestigious creative and effectiveness awards and is regularly recognized for its innovative and transformative client projects.
The full breadth of those projects spans headless architecture and multisite networks for large enterprise brands, as well as groundbreaking digital experiences for unique organizations doing extraordinary work themselves.
One thread that’s tied many of whiteGREY’s most successful digital client engagements together has been the use of WordPress, and WP Engine’s fully managed WordPress platform, providing the agency with a secure, scalable canvas on which its teams can quickly bring client projects to life.
With priority support and hands-on training, those teams can also focus on innovation and the larger user experience, creating extraordinary outcomes for individual clients instead of wasting valuable time and resources on maintenance and troubleshooting.
This ebook offers a closer look at some of the most compelling projects whiteGREY has brought to fruition, harnessing WP Engine’s platform performance, developer solutions, and unrivaled agency support along the way.
Melbourne & Olympic Parks
Serving up a win with a fully managed multisite.
whiteGREY was charged with developing the digital presence for Melbourne & Olympic Parks (M&OP), a precinct of sporting and event stadiums where the Australian Open is held. In addition to the international tennis tournament, the precinct hosts hundreds of other live events each year.
“We engaged whiteGREY to support us in the transformation of a new digital environment for our customers, guests, and venue hirers,” said M&OP Director of Strategy and Transformation Ben Goodwin.
To execute that vision, whiteGREY designed and built six websites (one per stadium + an overall M&OP site) within a span of five months, using a single design system and a WordPress multisite architecture that was launched and hosted on WP Engine’s fully managed WordPress platform.
The impact of the project was immediate and impressive, with all of the sites presenting excellent performance metrics as soon as they were launched. Additionally, the new site architecture and authoring environment made it significantly easier and more efficient for M&OP’s internal teams to edit and manage content across the sites.
When compared to the weeks immediately leading up to the 2022 Australian Open, the new websites saw a 400% increase in traffic once the annual tennis tournament began, with high site speed and no outages throughout the event.
Additionally, compared with the 2021 tournament, the M&OP sites saw 192% more users and 199% more sessions, driven almost entirely by improved organic search performance. There was also a 5% increase in pages per session and a 12% decrease in the bounce rate.
In 2023, many of those numbers jumped again, including a 228% increase in users (vs. 2022) and a 126% increase in sessions.
“This project was a major win in terms of the final product we delivered and the timeline we were able to deliver it on,” said whiteGREY Chief Experience Officer, James Keeler. “Since the launch, we’ve been able to build out the site to include additional content and functionality, such as a greater range of search and event filters, a higher level of integration with the ticketing partner, more advanced stadium mapping, and a significantly higher level of accessibility.”
“That’s the beauty of building with WP Engine—our teams were able to do exactly what we needed them to do without spending any extra time on servers, security, or other WordPress-specific maintenance tasks. For a business like M&OP, where traffic can spike suddenly as new events are announced, and where security is vital, WP Engine’s hosted solution is perfect as the platform itself handles all of that.”
Ultimately, the project provided M&OP with a stellar digital home, and it’s served as a prime example for other whiteGREY clients interested in larger websites with multisite implementation—i.e., a multinational corporation with a master site and separate country-specific sites, or a master brand site with associated sites for sub-brands.
Mammoth
Protecting endangered wildlife with a world-first data intelligence tool.
The iconic African elephant lives on the cusp of extinction and without the efforts of groups such as the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (SWT), this magnificent animal would be gone.
Born from one family’s passion for Kenya and its wilderness, SWT was established 45 years ago and is best known for its Orphans’ Project, the first and most successful elephant orphan rescue and rehabilitation program in the world.
While the organization has saved more than 300 orphaned elephants across Kenya, protecting others from the constant threat of human-wildlife conflict had become a race against time the organization feared it was losing.
For help finding a tech-driven solution, SWT tapped whiteGREY, whose team accompanied anti-poaching patrols in Kenya for a close-up view of the challenges they were facing.
“We quickly understood that real-time data was going to be the key element in winning the race against extinction,” said whiteGREY’s James Keeler. “Real-time data takes you from prevention to prediction. It takes you where the elephants are, where the people are, where they’re going, and why.”
To enable SWT anti-poaching rangers, pilots, and veterinarians to all collect data in real-time while on patrol, whiteGREY created a progressive web app (PWA) called Mammoth (given the mammoth size of terrain SWT protects), which works both online and offline as rangers patrol massive, remote areas of Kenya.
Until Mammoth was created, SWT’s teams used pen and paper to record activity. Time-sensitive information was relayed by radio to an operations room, while full data sheets were manually input into a central database on a monthly basis, often rendering the data obsolete by the time it was received.
Mammoth now makes data collection easy. Users simply log an incident at a location, and then add the details, largely using drop-down menus. At the end of a patrol, teams submit all of the data they’ve collected, and they can also view their patrol on a map.
The app offers different interfaces based on user type (e.g. the pilots’ interface has large buttons to make data entry easy while flying whereas the anti-poaching rangers’ interface has far more drop-down options and data inputs).
“This project was a great example of using WP Engine in the PWA space and leveraging location services to provide an absolutely amazing organization with a game-changing outcome.” added whiteGREY Chief Technology Officer Jono Casley. “We had to use a web-first solution to meet the need of storing data in both on and offline environments and getting that to work with the GPS coordinates provided some challenges. However, WP Engine’s flexibility and connectedness helped facilitate what we needed to do.”
Since its launch, Mammoth’s impact has been felt by four groups:
- SWT and the rangers who are making a bigger impact, helping SWT stay at the global vanguard of solving the human-elephant conflict.
- Donors, who see their goodwill and donations helping build a platform that will help tip the balance back in the favor of the conservationists, away from extinction.
- The broader Kenyan population, including the farmers who need to provide for their families and communities in a harmonious way, can be managed better.
- And of course, the elephants who have a new ally in the race to survive.
Volvo Car Australia
Accelerating digital innovation with headless WordPress.
Building an accurate pricing calculator for prospective car buyers can be difficult in any market, but in Australia, a long list of regional taxes and fees for automobiles makes the process that much more challenging.
Nonetheless, when Volvo Car Australia approached whiteGREY for help creating an all-inclusive pricing tool for its website, the creative tech agency was able to steer the project in the right direction.
The challenge was multi-faceted and included compiling a trove of applicable tax data, as well as building the tool in a way that would integrate seamlessly with Volvo’s global web infrastructure.
whiteGREY worked with WP Engine to build a headless WordPress solution that pulls data from Volvo’s global infrastructure and from IHS Australian services via an integration, into a single new interface. The use of location services made it simple for prospects to get the transparent pricing for each Volvo model they really needed.
“Working with WP Engine in the headless space was refreshing,” said whiteGREY Chief Technology Office Jono Casley. “Between our in-house React and WordPress developers and their headless engineers, we were able to create an incredible outcome at a record pace, ensuring we were able to support the needs of prospective buyers.”
While the initial focus of the project was a driveaway price calculator, whiteGREY subsequently assisted the Volvo Car Australia team with the creation of an entire Dealer Toolkit, which includes:
- The drive-away pricing calculator prospective car buyers can use to get a clear picture of their final purchase cost.
- A trade-in calculator that provides potential customers with a transparent view of their vehicle’s trade-in value.
- A safety recall tool Volvo owners can use to check the status of their vehicles and respond to a recall notice if needed.
- An electric vehicle order tracking tool, which recent buyers can use to track the progress of their car from production through shipping and delivery.
The tools were also integrated with Volvo’s APAC Salesforce system via multiple API endpoints. So, when a potential customer enters trade-in data, for example, it’s fed through to the dealer when they request a test drive, helping local Volvo dealerships provide better service while also maximizing their chances of making a sale.
The best part? The entire site was launched within four months of the initial kickoff, and it continues to deliver a competitive advantage for Volvo Car Australia as it grows.
“This project was an excellent example of using headless architecture to go to market quickly, but with WordPress serving as the backend CMS, it’s also a testament to the flexible role open source can play in a headless configuration,” said Casley.
Pond Party
Australia’s greenest energy provider doubles sales with a highly personalized, interactive experience.
In an effort to offset rising energy consumption, whiteGREY partnered with Powershop, Australia’s greenest retail energy provider, to design and build a digital experience that would educate children about the impact of their energy use on the planet.
The end result was Pond Party, a highly personalized, interactive online experience that follows a Green and Golden Bell Frog named Goldie as she prepares for a Pond Party.
Readers learn about energy consumption and various species’ ecosystems as they help Goldie with her party prep. However, the site goes far beyond education—the story is personalized to each individual Powershop customer through whiteGREY’s innovative API connection with individual smart electricity meter data for each customer.
As customers return to the story each day, the party at the pond is more or less lively depending on how much energy their household has consumed. If you use less energy than the day before, you’ll see the pond party get livelier in real time.
Pond Party uses a WordPress backend and WP Engine’s fully managed platform, which delivers high performance and the scalability and security required for this type of personalized digital experience.
“This project is a great example of using creative tech to build an engaging, data-driven experience,” said whiteGREY’s James Keeler. “By educating kids and families, we empower them to change their energy usage, and in doing so reduce their impact on the planet.”
Pond Party contributed to 57% YoY sales growth for Powershop, encouraging thousands of Australians to reconsider their energy usage. It reached over 2.5 million households with user sessions 60% above target.
An Extraordinary Agency Partnership
The projects outlined in this series of case studies are but a sample of the rich and varied client engagements whiteGREY has created in recent years.
While the agency’s deep brand and technology expertise has been lauded by clients and validated by a growing client list comprised of major brands, whiteGREY’s work also continues to earn prominent recognition across a slate of sought-after creative and effectiveness awards, including its designation by the Australian Financial Review as the #1 Most Innovative Media & Marketing Company, and the #1 Most Innovative Small Business. You can view all of whiteGREY’s awards here.
While the extraordinary is apparent across its impressive body of digital work, whiteGREY’s partnership with WP Engine has played a key role in the agency’s sustained success, providing its teams with a reliable, resilient platform that powers whiteGREY’s freedom to create.
“whiteGREY is the agency it is today because of our in-house talent, expertise, ambition, and passion,” said whiteGREY Chief Experience Officer James Keeler. “But that talent is able to shine because of partners like WP Engine.”
“From our most straightforward website builds to the most complex, WP Engine’s WordPress experts, its dedicated agency success teams, and its WordPress-optimized platform that is reliable, fast, and secure, gives us the freedom to focus on the extraordinary, and the outcome has been clear for anyone to see.”
Find out more about whiteGREY and the way it works with WP Engine here.
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