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Project Overview
In 2012, Telstra was presented with an exciting opportunity to become a proud partner of the City of Sydney’s New Year’s Eve. This colourful, one-of-a-kind property – with a 2012 theme of ‘Embrace’ - was the perfect match to bring to life the connection, diversity and colour at the heart of Telstra’s brand.
The 2012 Sydney New Year’s Eve App was created to help overcome connectivity issues at peak times on NYE and make the event interactive for the first time ever – thus truly bringing to life Telstra’s established brand positioning statement: “IT’S HOW WE CONNECT.”
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Mark Buckman Telstra Chief Marketing Officer
Inese Kingsmill Telstra Director Corporate Marketing
Sean Hall Telstra General Manager/Brand Channels
Alex Heathers Telstra Brand Experiential Manager
Jacqui Condor Telstra Senior Brand Manager
Monique Spanbrook Telstra Senior Marketing Specialist
Shannon Morrow Telstra Media Sponsorship And Content Manager
Annemarie Teslik Telstra Graduate
Sarah Green Telstra Corporate Affairs Advisor
Heath Campanaro Imagination Director
Angela Lemon Imagination Client Services Director
Adrian Goldthorp Imagination Creative Director
Troy Graham Imagination Head of Copy
David Clarke Imagination Creative Director Digital
Mark Davies Imagination Senior Digital Producer
Lee Nguyen Imagination Designer
Slawomir Jasinski Imagination Technical Lead
Dan Farrugia Imagination Senior Designer
Dougal Mckenzie Google Head Of Industry/Technology And Telco Google Australia
Josh Guest B2cloud Managing Director
Project Brief
Before most major cities around the globe… the world turns its eye to Sydney, as we kick off the New Year celebrations.
But at a time when the world connects with Sydney, Australian’s are struggling to connect with each other.
Due to the enormous number of people at the event and around the country jamming the telephone networks during that iconic midnight moment, most are left frustrated at not being able to get their messages through, and miss out on the moments of celebration as a result.
In addition, people spend a lot of time looking for the best place to watch the show, which has been largely the same for the last few years. Once they’ve settled on a location, Sydney crowds often sit waiting for the show for many hours with little to do. Even during the night there is currently no way to get ‘involved’ in the event.
Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, looked at the challenges of Sydney’s New Year’s Eve celebrations and asked the question: How can we use our connectivity and network to enhance the Sydney New Year’s Eve experience and allow all Australian’s the opportunity to connect like never before through technology platforms that are interactive, engaging and informative?
The solution came in the form of the 2012 Sydney New Year’s Eve App.
Project Need
The custom-built 2012 Sydney NYE app set about managing the problem of network congestion at midnight on New Year’s Eve, as well as connecting Sydney-siders to the event.
Interactive maps connected people to the best fireworks locations. We connected them to entertainment through live streams, interactive Sydney Harbour Bridge colour moments, and user-generated messaging projected onto the bridge pylons.
But most of all, we connected people to people – by allowing Australians, regardless of their service provider, to pre-write and load their midnight messages before the big show which allowed for better network management. The messages were then sent for free from midnight.
The solution was to use cloud services - virtual servers, cloud load balancers, special servers to handle static traffic and keep user data secure behind firewalls, while protecting it through data encryption layers. Cloud services gave us the opportunity to create resources on demand, without traditional limitations. Not only did the App meet Apple and Google’s design, interface and code guidelines, therefore satisfying usability requirements for the Hearing and Visually Impaired – it also worked with location in mind. Since most attendees around the Harbour spend long hours waiting for the main event, we had to ensure the App had a strong focus on memory management so that the device used as little power as possible. Coupled with a high level of caching and highly filtered use of GPS, the App remained functional for the duration of the day.
User Experience
We designed and created two native apps, one for Android and iOS, following design principles to make the App simple for all users to operate without instruction. The App included the following features:
Telstra Midnight Messages
All users, no matter what network they were on, could enter up to 50 text messages prior to 6pm on NYE, that were sent for free from midnight – meaning less frustration at midnight and less pressure on the network. Users preloaded 197,391 messages into the app.
Live News Feed
A constant feed of information and content was delivered to the app in the lead up to the night, designed to entertain and inform people while they waited for the main show on New Year’s Eve.
Telstra Message the Bridge
Users could interact with the App and event by writing NYE messages to be projected onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge pylons throughout the night. 26,348 people sent messages to the Bridge.
Interactive Maps
Detailed interactive maps allowed people to discover the best fireworks vantage points, as well as updating them on when sites had reached capacity.
Telstra Colour Moments
For an even richer experience, we created four moments, where the Sydney Harbour Bridge and fireworks changed colour and synced to a light show on the app. 33,580 joined in the Telstra Colour Moments.
The result was an unprecedented 5.4 years of brand engagement with the campaign and over 1 million minutes spent interacting with Telstra via the app on NYE.
Project Marketing
With public focus on New Year’s being low until after Christmas, our advertising window was tight.
The app was promoted via print advertising in the Telstra customer catalogue, as well as in every Sydney new Year’s Eve advertisement placed in major Sydney newspapers.
Online banners featured on Facebook, Google Advertising Network and YouTube, as did hype films that showcased the app and the features within.
To engage the general public further, we also advertised the App extensively on outdoor posters around the city in key, high foot traffic areas.
Because of the unique capabilities of the App and its wide appeal, we managed multiple unpaid mentions on radio and television, including the city’s top radio station 2DayFM and top rating breakfast television program, Sunrise. With the support of the New Year’s Eve creative ambassador, Kylie Minogue, we managed to market to an extremely wide audience in the small 6-day window we had.
On New Year’s Eve, we flooded the city streets with guerrilla advertising to entice foot traffic arriving at key vantage points to download the App during the day. This included 1,500 chalk stencils, 6,500 decals and promotional staff handing out NYE brochures throughout Sydney CBD.
Through this, we saw the App ranked in the Top 3 Apps on the Australian App Store. At its peak it achieved over 23,000 downloads in a single day, with a total of 74,436 downloads on New Year’s Eve.
The total advertising reach was around 5.5 million, with PR value estimated to be $1million.
Best use of Mobile in Marketing
This category recognises the best use of mobile incorporated in a wider marketing campaign.
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