Case study: brainmates helped a leading charity to define, develop and deploy a portfolio of social networks.

1. Case study – Defining, developing and deploying a social network
The company
An initiative of The Starlight Children’s Foundation, Livewire provides free, safe and supportive online
communities for Australian families affected by a serious illness, chronic health condition or disability.
Incorporating tailored content and interactive tools such as chatrooms, blogs, forums and games, Livewire
manages three distinct communities: Livewire Members, Livewire Siblings, and Livewire Parents.
The business challenge
With ambitious goals to expand the community offerings, Livewire invited brainmates to assist in two ways:
 Product Development: Overseeing the design and development of the communities, including registration
and membership systems, reporting, and design of functionality to enhance user experience.
 Product Marketing: Providing advice, insight and ideas for Livewire’s website content strategies, and creating
a Channel Marketing Strategy and Implementation Plan.
Our efforts and the outcomes
As Livewire’s temporary Product Team, brainmates quickly settled into their business to ensure full stakeholder
engagement whilst keeping the needs and wants of their customers at the core of the work. Playing a pivotal
role, brainmates led the project within Livewire and also managed relationships with key suppliers for graphics
design, content provision, and web and mobile development.
 The Livewire Siblings website was launched on schedule in along with major improvements to the public
website which made it faster, lighter and more accessible for users with low vision or poor motor-skills
 Roll-out of new features including new games, a music video player, and new chat rooms
 The Livewire Parents website launched ahead of schedule and under budget with over 160 pre-registered
parents in the community
 A Livewire Mobile site was launched providing Livewire “on-the-go”
brainmates ensured that the launches occurred smoothly and successfully with no disruption or impact to existing
members despite the scale of the project. The feedback from members has been overwhelmingly positive – in
particular the user-friendly site navigation and tailored content and functionality provided to each community has
been well received.
Testimonial
“brainmates was key to offering up expertise and a wealth of experience at a very critical time in the development
of Livewire. Most organisations would find it difficult if not impossible to afford to bring on the kind of capability
that brainmates has „on tap‟ – especially for fast moving programs or those where the specialist capability need is
significant but short in duration. Our experience with brainmates was outstanding!”
Omar Khalifa, Managing Director, Livewire
www.brainmates.com.au +61 (02) 9232 8147