The Brief
To support the athletes of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2009, Telstra approached Spin (now WeAreDigital) to rollout their HeroMessage platform and make significant enhancements to a program that had been running for 20 years.
The brief also included developing Telstra’s official Olympic website - promoting their handsets and live coverage data packs - as well as adapting the HeroMessage site for the Paralympic Games.
The Solution
Spin overhauled the HeroMessage platform, adding new channels for the public to send messages of support via Facebook, online video capture (using webcam) and WAP for the first time.
All messages were captured in a custom CMS so that staff could moderate inbound messages before forwarding them onto the athletes in Beijing to reply.
The strategy involved displaying messages from the public for the first time in text, picture and video formats, which had a snowball effect as people became inspired to send in their own messages of support.
A Flash application and Grant Hackett video engaged users and explained the concept and how easy it is for people to participate.
My Involvement
I was responsible for producing the Telstra Olympic website, while managing the team who implemented the HeroMessage campaign.
Responsibilities included:
- Project planning and specification
- Paper based testing on real customers during design phase
- Copywriting
- Managing design and development process
- Coordinating video shoots with Grant Hackett and other athletes
- Resource planning and coordination
- Sourcing a dedicated hosting supplier for the project
- User acceptance testing
- Client management post launch throughout Olympics
- Wrap-up report with key learnings
