Unified Creates a Socially Savvy Guest WiFi Experience for USS Midway
Unified Products and Services Guest WiFi Login Platform Creates Unique Social Media Connection Between Museum Visitors and The Historic Floating Museum
SAN DIEGO, CA - October, 2015 (PRESS RELEASE JET) -- Unified Products and Services, in partnership with Ruckus Wireless Inc. and Equinox Telecom, has been contracted by the USS Midway Museum to create a customized wireless environment including a unique social media WiFi login system that connects the USS Midway Museum to millions of visitors.
The USS Midway currently serves as an international attraction, museum, event venue, and historic artifact. The ship itself was the longest-serving aircraft carrier of the 20th Century and is an irreplaceable part of American history. Through volunteer efforts, USS Midway made its way to San Diego, CA and opened as a museum in 2004. By 2014 the USS Midway Museum set its sixth consecutive annual attendance record of 1.2 million visitors and established itself as the most-visited historic naval ship museum in the world. It is the 9th most-popular museum of any type in the U.S. on tripadvisor.com. The USS Midway has earned its place as a major destination by operating as a museum 363 days a year and hosting 700 events yearly, including 400 active-duty navy ceremonies.
The integration of Guest WiFi was something the USS Midway team knew they wanted to implelment on board. According to Scott McGaugh, Director of Marketing at the USS Midway, “It’s just been in the last three or four years that we got to a level where we could start thinking about wireless and the guest experience, which is absolutely crucial to us.” In order to stay relevant and connected to all generations of guests the USS Midway team realized it needed Guest WiFi capability, as well as strong growth in social media followers. After reviewing numerous suppliers, the USS Midway team decided to partner with Unified and Ruckus Wireless to create a robust Guest WiFi installation throughout the entire ship that leverages the login process to garner additional social media connections.
Ruckus Wireless was utilized as the USS Midway represented one of the most difficult RF environments due to the massive size and steel construction of the ship. Unified created a social media login and authentication process for guests that was both fast and simple. This cloud-based system allows visitors to easily log onto the USS Midway Guest WiFi with a social media login, such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. After authenticating directly with the social media server, guests connect directly to the USS Midway Facebook page, check in on the ship, post images to social media, and learn more about the USS Midway. According to Joe Gursky, Director of Information Technology at the USS Midway, “It walks them through all the authentication steps they need to get onto the network, take pictures and post without IT intervention. That’s what makes it a solid solution for us and so far it’s worked wonderfully.” Since the Unified Guest WiFi installation the USS Midway Facebook page following has increased by over 400 percent on a month-to-month basis. After the social network connection is established during login, guests and fans are linked to USS Midway directly during their visit and throughout the year via Facebook, which is far more cost-effective than traditional media.
Another feature of the Unified platform is that it provides demographics and analytics about visitors to the USS Midway, which their marketing team uses to learn more about their visitors and enables them to customize the guest experience. According to Gursky, “We’re getting a good insight into where our visitors are coming from and what their preferences are technology-wise.” This information helps the USS Midway team easily target their marketing efforts as they move into app development and guest experience applications that will soon be a part of the museum.
The cloud-based social media login allows for users to connect by authenticating outside of the actual network and requires no additional servers or software to be installed. This enhances network security, while creating no additional IT support burdens. According to Gursky, “The installation was quick, efficient, easy. I would feel comfortable recommending it to other people.”
As the USS Midway Museum moves into its next decade of improvements the Unified Guest WiFi platform is providing the tools to address next generation visitor data demands.. As McGaugh stated, “This WiFi capability will directly influence the growing digital marketing program of Midway in the coming years.”
Kevin Dailey, President of Unified, added “It was a great honor to assist the staff of the Midway in improving their guest experience on such an historic vessell. So much of today’s communication is done through social media and their team was very in tune with staying relative and listening to their audience in new media models. This investment will help them achieve both of those goals for a long time to come.”
ABOUT Unified Products and Services
Unified is a National provider of Guest WiFi solutions. Unified’s technology allows organizations that face increasing demand from their customers for free Guest WiFi access to the internet. Unified provides two separate and unique methods to help companies grow their bottom line while giving the customers what they want: GuestAdz and ActiveAdz. Our cloud based Ad Serving platforms allows for internal or external of advertisements customized for the Network host’s audience. These solutions can also drive increased Social Networking connections, collect demographic data for analysis, deliver emails and SMS messages to the customer or simply deliver a revenue sharing model that increase profits with nominal effort. The Global Mobile Advertising Market is valued at $15.33 billion in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 26.40 % to reach $99.89 billion by 2022 Unified helps our partners capture a portion of this exploding market for themselves. For more information, visit http://www.unifiedps.com
Media Contact
Company Name: Unified Products and Services
Name: Kevin Dailey
Phone: 714-660-7722
Email Address: kdailey@unifiedps.cm
Website: http://www.unifiedps.com