Virgin Media Launch
Event producers ITCH asked Digital Antics to provide a Mobile Messages to Screen (MMTS) solution to enable the collation and display of SMS, e-mail and voting content for the launch of Sir Richard Branson’s new Virgin Media brand in London’s Covent Garden.
Amid a curious teaser advertising campaign featuring Uma Thurman’s voice and animated figure eights, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Media brand was launched upon the UK in February 2007. With a 10am press conference scheduled at the Royal Opera House, some people were quick to wonder exactly what the large perspex box and stage were doing in the middle of Covent Garden’s East Piazza. Just before 11am Branson was escorted into the box by Hollywood star Dita Von Teese and would remain there for the next 6 hours being entertained by several celebrities as well as receiving emails and SMS messages powered by MMTS.
Digital Antics’ operators Richard Fish and Jason Root arrived onsite the previous day with Managing Director Quintin Willison to set up and test the system.
Richard commented:
It was cold, it was cramped and by the end of the two days we were fairly tired but the gig passed almost effortlessly. Any snags we hit were ironed out within minutes and the software behaved impeccably as always! I was impressed with the response of the people texting and emailing us and consequently there was never a dull moment.
Yet again we took advantage of the extensibility of our MMTS solution to design and develop a number of bespoke interfaces just for this event. These interfaces included communications with the Virgin Media Launch Lounge website via a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) service implemented on the web servers by 12foot6. This meant that the MMTS software received new question messages for Branson directly from the website via HTTP, and could respond and moderate them as well as receive online voting results in realtime.
The modifications to the software in order for Branson to be able to instantly receive emails came in the form of a dedicated ‘e-mail client’ application which ran on his PC in the box. This allowed our operators to forward messages one at a time to him for a response. The replies were then associated automatically with the original message within MMTS and forwarded on to the microsite for online publication as well as output to the big screen.
A high volume of text messages and emails were received through the course of the day providing a vast amount of content to select from when creating playlists for the screen. The voting sessions alone sparked great interest with the public as they fought to ensure that Branson devoured a chocolate coated scorpion.
Digital Antics coordinated with a number of suppliers on this project with regard to SMS and website message delivery channels and screen output and also liaised directly with staff from Virgin Mobile and NTL to ensure that all message requirements were satiated and delivered flawlessly.