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The Brit Awards

Brit-Awards-screen-grab

Overview

The BRIT Awards are among the most coveted and well-known music industry award events in the world. With so much interest, it is vital for the Awards to have a fully up-to-date and interactive website which will appeal to the young people the Trust targets. Solid State Group worked with the BRITS creative agency, JM Enternational, to provide a tailored content management solution that provided advanced functionality and a wealth of interactive content.

Website

www.brits.co.uk

Background

The British Recording Industry Trust (BRIT) was established in 1989 and is entirely funded by the music industry. Its mission is to give young people a chance to express their musical creativity regardless of race, class, sex or ability.

Since its inception, over £8.8 million has been donated by the BRIT Trust to various charities. All the profit made from the BRIT Awards goes to the BRIT Trust. To date over £5.5 million has been raised by the BRIT Awards alone.

Objectives

  • Allow content to be added to the website by multiple parties via a web browser interface
  • Select a platform that can be re-used each year
  • Ensure content management system chosen offers sophisticated functionality but is cost-effective to ensure BRITS profits for the Trust are maximised
  • Provide online voting which prevents duplication and allows for single transferable voting
  • Provide automated transmission of voting results to BRITS Headquarters
  • Provide online forums, polls and quizzes
  • Provide excellent registration capability and segmented newsletter
    functionality

Solution

The creative company for the BRITS, JM Enternational selected Solid State Group for their high-level of product functionality and customisation which still carried a cost-effective price-tag.

Brit-Awards-screen-grab

Both the 2004 and 2005 BRIT awards websites were built using WebDeck.Over 40 different 'authors' were provided with access to WebDeck, allowing the easy addition of information from a large base of editors, story writers, press and publicity, TV and radio schedulers and photographers including the record companies that represented the nominated artists.

Each author could update areas on the site relating to their artist without having access to or visibility of areas that were not relevant to them. Features, news, photos, MP3s, web links, discographies, biographies, tour dates and record label contact details were all added, ensuring that the BRIT Awards site was comprehensive and up to date. All this was possible without the need for a full-time webmaster as JM Enternational simply 'approved' content submitted by authors with a single click. The general public even contribute to the site using Forum functionality provided by WebDeck.

WebDeck is rented by the BRITS for 6 months of each year, this is the period when marketing and promotion activities for the BRIT Awards are occurring, making the solution offered by Solid State Group particularly cost-effective. With WebDeck as a base platform, content can be added and amended throughout this period and also allow the design or look and feel to be updated each year.

In 2005, new functionality including online voting was added to the site based on better user data registration and collection. With the Awards being nominated and voted on by members of the public, a method of accepting online voting became extremely important. The solution offered by Solid State Group ensured that, once registered, votes from any individual were only counted once and the complex single transferable vote (where someone nominates their 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. choice) was effectively accumulated and delivered in encrypted form to the BRIT Headquarters for collation.

2005 also saw an exciting interaction between the website and the awards event. An application was designed for the photo galleries using photos taken on digital cameras during the event. Having taken pictures, BRITS representatives simply slipped the memory cards into a backstage PC and all the images on it were automatically tagged, resized and uploaded to the site. The application then intelligently cross-referenced each photo to different artists and areas on the site. This ensured that the BRIT Awards website continued to evolve even whilst the event was being staged and delivered a truly interactive experience.

In addition to core website functionality provided by WebDeck, Solid State Group's email marketing solution, OutReach, was used to send promotional HTML emails, competitions, press releases and website updates to BRIT Award subscribers. Each campaign was automatically monitored and statistics about each campaign were generated accordingly.

"Solid State Group has consistently provided us with a sophisticated and cost-effective solution. Their level of dedication and responsiveness in meeting our needs and helping evolve the site each year has been exceptional and helps maintain the progressive brand image of the BRIT Awards."

John Marshall, JM Enternational


About Solid State Group

Solid State Group is a content management, web applications and services consultancy which was founded out of a desire to provide solutions which were more time and cost-efficient.

Leveraging the managing partners experience in the IT consulting, financial and marketing sectors, Solid State Group has built a strong reputation for robust products that can be rapidly and effectively implemented across a broad range of industry sectors.

For more information please visit www.solidstategroup.com or call 0845 838 2163