When Orange asked us to help develop their new film service for web and mobile the brief was to provide top-quality trailers, clips, behind-the-scenes video and supporting material for every movie out now or coming soon – but to take a different approach from other movie sites.

Instead of focusing on the views of professional film critics or appealing to out-and-out movie buffs, Orange Film is all about the reactions of “real” movie-goers – and in particular the huge numbers of Orange customers who make use of their 2 for 1 tickets on a Wednesday. The aim is to help you decide what to go and see with your friends or family, so as well as providing listings, showing times and trailers the service uses people’s snap reactions to answer the question “Has anyone seen this movie? What’s it like?”

We gather reactions on the Orange Film website, mobile site (left), by text and through social networks like Twitter. And we also get instant reactions in the foyer when the Orange Film crew goes out to speak to audiences as they leave screenings on a Wednesday.

The Orange Wednesdays 2 for 1 promotion has been a phenomenal success over the past five years. Wednesday is now the most popular day for going to the cinema outside the weekend when it used to be the quietest. Back in 2004 in the first week of Orange Wednesdays 12,000 people texted FILM to 241 to take up the offer. Now up to 300,000 people go on an Orange Wednesdays outing together every week.

We’re regularly among the audience ourselves as working on the film service at IMP means every day we’re seeing loads of new clips and trailers, as well as moderating all the comments coming in … and it really whets your appetite for movies you’d otherwise miss.

We’ve got a fun new audience-based application coming soon on the Orange Film service so we’ll tell you all about it when it launches.

Posted by Paul on 13 October 2009, 16:29

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We’ve been designing and managing innovative information, communication and entertainment services for mobile devices for the past 10 years – so we’ve got a good grasp of what works and what doesn’t work for different types of mobile phone user.

We manage a range of rich multimedia services for video-enabled phones – now a significant and fast-growing proportion of all handsets. But we also recognise that mobile developers (and the networks themselves) are often guilty of rushing on to the next big thing and ignoring some of the basic properties of the mobile phone, and the still untapped opportunities to create simple but hugely effective new ways for businesses and customers to interact.

Here are some of the areas we cover:

MOBILE-OPTIMISED INTERNET SITES

It’s not that long ago that early-adopter mobile customers were complaining that “wap is crap” – we’ve come a long away since, and today there are many great examples of internet sites and services optimised to work well on a small screen.

High-end devices like the iPhone make a pretty good job of presenting up full-blown web sites but for most phones it’s still necessary to design the user experience with the screen size and other functional considerations in mind. Most of our clients want to reach the widest possible number of their customers so we specialise in creating services that can be optimised to work on a broad range of devices.

We create everything from simple single-purpose mobile microsites designed to complement broader communications all the way up to sophisticated interactive video-based services tailored to the interests and context of the individual user. We design and test each service to ensure the end user receives the best possible experience for their particular handset.

MESSAGING SERVICES

Text messaging is a great, simple way to kick off a dialogue with a customer – and within a couple of further interactions you can be well on the way to a deeper level of engagement where you’re able to deliver back a highly personalised service.

We manage shortcode-based services ranging from the simple “Text KEYWORD to 60300” to receive back a specific piece of information through to using the SMS as the first stage in a more detailed exchange, potentially leading the user to richer media such as video or a mobile internet site.

MOBILE UPLOADS

We make it easy for clients to launch services based on their customers’ own content – pictures, photos, stories – by providing the tools to make it easy for individuals to upload directly from their mobile phones.

It’s a simple call to action to ask people to send photos and videos by MMS to a shortcode with keyword – and our Profusion system helps manage all the incoming material with tools to edit it and forward it to its final destination.

We also provide complete managed services for user-generated content including full moderation to sift out unacceptable content pre-publication in line with the client’s own editorial guidelines.

VIDEO ON MOBILE

More and more people are using their mobiles to download and view videos as phones become more sophisticated and the operators introduce simpler charges for using data.

We ingest video material from a wide range of sources in every conceivable format – we take in raw content from end users using our Profusion tools; we have live feeds of professionally-produced content from major broadcasters and TV production companies; and we even deal with video supplied to us on physical tapes or discs.

All the material is transcoded for different types of devices – and the result is a database of optimised video ready to be integrated into an end service.

We are connected to mobile operator billing systems so you can charge for video downloads – or you can make video available free of charge (other than data costs). We also provide video advertising solutions allowing you to automatically stitch short ads in realtime before, during or after the video content a user has requested depending on their profile, the context, or the nature of the content. It’s the beauty of mobile – the most personal of all media touchpoints.

Posted by Mark on 13 October 2009, 14:53

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