HP Summer Camp for Young Gamers Leverage

Sales

Winner SPINNWinner SABRE AWARDS FinalistEUROPEAN

EXCELLENCEAWARDS

The HP Inferno Webradio As Displayedon the Website of Inferno Online

Campaign site

Background

A survey conducted by the Mayflower Charity Foundation (Sweden’s largest Child help organization) showed that there are less summer camps for kids this year. With that in mind, and with our mission to introduce the new gaming computer Z800 to a new target group, we created a HP Summer Camp for young gamers.

Purpose

The objectives where to position HP and Z800 within a context of gaming and to encourage gamers to engage with the brand at their terms. The HP Summer Camp was located at Inferno Online, the largest gaming centre in the Nordics.

The Campaign

Our three part strategy was based on public engagement;

•1) A spokespersons programme. We identified about 60 young gamers and several key people within the gaming culture. With their help we could through word-of-mouth create hype around the HP Summer Camp. Among the key people were the pop duo Rebound, Thomas Bengtsson (Award winning World of Warcraft player), SK|Allen and SK|Budak (Award winning clan, Counter-Strike), Fnatic ZAAZ and inzane (Sweden's most famous female Counter-Strike Players), Johanna Beckman (Hostess on Radio Sweden).

The Campaign

•2) Invite young gamers to a Summer Camp where they could test HP's gaming desktop computer Z800 and HP Gaming Mouse with VooDooDNA.

•3) Create a unique media channel, HP Inferno Webradio – hosted by young gamers, as well as using Facebook and IRC.

Technology

The core of the Webradio Station was based on a modified version of IceCast2, an Open Source Multimedia Streaming Server, capable of real time transcoding of the high quality input stream into MP3 and OGG.

The infrastructure consisted of a cluster of relay servers to handle the load of thousands of concurrent listeners with little to no lag while using a high bitrate in order to ensure the highest quality broadcasts.

Technology

Users were able to listen to the live stream via a number of ways;

•The Flash based widget, placed on HP’s and Inferno Online’s websites as well as the user’s own websites by using a custom embed code.

•Directly from any iOS based device, i.e. iPhone, iPad, etc.

•By using a M3U or XSPF playlists in the user’s preferred audio player, such as WinAmp.

Technology

Lastly, users were given access to a custom API, allowing them to develop their own applications that streamed the Webradio broadcast. The API was available alongside sample documents and files on how to create their own Flash based widgets as well as ideas on other kinds of implementation.

Results

Results and expectations were exceeded already after the first week when we surpassed the objective regarding the number of listeners for the entire campaign and became the largest gaming radio in the Nordics. We created what we wanted – a natural link between HP and gaming and managed to create hype around the HP Summer Camp, HP’s gaming radio, and increase sales of products within gaming by 70%.

Results

•Radio listeners: 100 000/month (20X objective)

•Articles, gaming press online: 6 (3X objective)

•Online: 3 000 000 (6X objective)

•Visitors to the Summer Camp: 6000 (12X objective)

•Increased sales of products in Gaming: 70% (7X objective)

AudioPro

Making Audio Pro the no. 1 music application on MySpace

WinnerEUROPEAN EXCELLENCE AWARDS

Campaign site

Our mission was to introduce the new loudspeaker Stereo Two and increase awareness of the Swedish HiFi company Audio Pro with focus on a broad target group – music lovers. We wanted to position Audio Pro within a context of lifestyle and encourage a broader consumer base to engage with the brand.

Background

To create something that would be appreciated by the target group whilst positioning Audio Pro as a innovative leader in the areas of music and sound. To fulfill this strategy we wanted to collaborate with musicians to lend credibility and create word of mouth. Sharing music and information is a solid part of the social media landscape and a natural way for the target group to interact. It was important that the social media platform could easily be shared and passed on online which is why we decided to create a widget.

Purpose

We initiated collaboration with a leading Swedish DJ. She selected the music for the widget and daily updated it with new songs. As a compliment we did a series of video recordings with Audio Pro’s sound professor, where he explained the philosophy behind the brand. The widget was made accessible via Audiopro.eu, Windows Live, MySpace, Facebook and iGoogle among others.

The Campaign

Technology

Server side, a custom built streaming server, capable of handling streaming of both video and audio at the same time, was the core of the setup. The infrastructure was scalable and load balanced and was able to handle tens of thousands of concurrent connections with no lag for the front end user.

The administrator could upload a wide variety of media; video, audio and images. Video and audio got converted in the background on a dedicated server using FFMpeg and MEncoder. Product images and cover art for the music were resized in order to fit different sizes of the widget.

Technology

All content was dynamically fetched by the Flash based widget. The widget listened for changes on the server, thus enabling it to pull new content ad hoc and redraw itself in real time. The widget’s audio player was playlist based, allowing for hours of continuous play. It was available in two different sizes, in landscape and portrait, carefully selected to fit most layouts.

Our goals were for the widget to be placed on 200 highly influential websites. The widget became the no.1 MySpace application hit in the category “recent popular music” and the first Swedish music app on Facebook. It got over 5700 unique users on MySpace and an additional 1000 unique users on other internet sites. The collaboration involved 40 hot artists such as Promoe and Timbuktu.

Results

Positive buzz took place in blogs and forums with users talking about the brand within a context of “love for music”. With a total reach that amounted to 329 000 unique views a day, reaching our goal of 200 websites by 3400% and the widget spread to countries as diverse as the USA, Russia and Spain, our campaign became a milestone in the development of the Swedish social media scene.

Results

No. 1 MySpace App Hit in the“Recent Popular Music”

More Than 5700 Unique Users

MySpace App on Artist’s MySpace Page

Apollo

Silence... Aaaaand... Action!

Finalist SABRE AWARDS

Campaign site

In a media landscape where consumers are getting more and more cynical about commercial messages, companies need to change to a dialogue with the consumers. Internet offers the possibility to invite consumers to co-creation; Co-branding and Co-production of products, services, and also the communication around them.

That’s the strategy of “Silence… Aaaand… Action!”, a campaign that lets the consumer shape the product and also do the commercial that sells this product themselves. A commercial that later also will be shown on national TV.

Background

The purpose with the campaign was to: • Increase brand awareness, by co-branding

with the consumers • Communicate that Apollo (tour-operator,

charter trips) listens to the customers and invites to a dialogue, co-creating the products/services, and the commercial messages

• Involve consumers/customers to make sure products and communications are relevant.

Purpose

Viral campaign invited consumers to go to a site and upload their own video with a commercial TV spot they had done at home, showing how they want their ideal holiday organized by Apollo. All videos shown on web-site as they were uploaded, à la YouTube, and rated by viewers and also an expert jury.

Professional film directors were continuously blogging on the web-site, communicating with viewers and participators, adding their own reflections and spreading know-how about film making.

The Campaign

Technology

The website was built as a community with YouTube-like qualities; the users were able to upload their movies in file sizes up to 2 GB, with a maximum resolution of 1920x1080. The asynchronous upload was handled by a Flash front end with a PHP and MySQL back end on a dedicated server. The uploaded file was then converted in the background into Flash Video and several screenshots using FFMpeg or Mencoder. The converted video was displayed on the website for other users to see, rate, comment and share.

75 trade/media (although this was not an objective) and 786 individual blogs linked to the site and 132 from Facebook, spreading the link to a minimum of 3.000.000 viewers. 119 films of acceptable quality were uploaded, and 146.000 people actively engaged in the site and the Directors blog.

Results