Background

How do you turn your live audience into a massive digital marketing force? NRJ Star Night is one of the largest music events taking place in Switzerland. Over 15 international and national acts inspire around 13.000 fans with a breathtaking live show. They partnered up with Sparkle to enhance the live experience even further. By adding ground breaking technology to the stage, the audience was digitally and physically integrated with the whole live experience.

Problem

Social media plays a crucial part, bringing the brand and fan experience further than just the event. Before events, organisers are now connecting with their audience, building hype around the event to sell more tickets or to get people to register. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook plays here an important part in their digital marketing. However, many events struggle to get participants to share content.

A participant sharing content

Energy Switzerland had a lot of interesting and creative ideas on how to maximize the reach and engagement around their event NRJ Star night. But this time they wanted to take it even further. Marcel Gwerder from Energy:

Originally, we were looking for a way to bring our screens to life during pre-show and breaks. Additionally, we had several use cases where we needed an API to show social content on our websites. As a result, we decided to develop our own software, which actually was in use for a few years but ultimately the development began to be too much of a burden, considering it was a distraction from our core business. At that point we went on to seek an affordable replacement. That’s where Sparkle came into play.

Solution

Energy combined Sparkles technology for visualisation of User Generated Content with massive screens on stage. This created both a feeling of belonging for everyone in the audience and at the same time create unheard of reach outside the stadium. By engaging the participants to share content, Energy brought the event to the fans that didn’t have a ticket.

We aggregated all posts from the Instagram hashtag ESN16 and customized the Flipgrid theme to make the visualization look stunning. The Sparkle setup did not only look stunning, it also allowed Energy to focus on their core, as Marcel puts it:

A very valuable benefit of Sparkle for us is the fact that the time needed to set up the screens was reduced drastically, which allows our developers to focus on their core tasks. Sparkle provides us with a well thought-out tool we cannot afford to develop ourselves. Although we haven’t done this just yet, we’re eager to try out new ways of engaging the crowd and I think Sparkle can be of great value in this regard.

Result

The digital display solution in action

Not only does the Sparkle look stunning, it also had a massive effect on the reach, engagement and impressions. In total there were 2307 posts from the event, with a potential reach of 3 242 325 and an incredible 4 262 091 impressions. The posts also inspired 173 377 likes and 3 682 comments. In order to create such a successful event, communication is key, in the words of Marcel:

Sparkle provided us with a flexible yet affordable alternative to our self-made software. Sparkle helped out multiple times with customized solutions. We were in need of more complex screen setups that were not quite possible out of the box, leaving API usage aside. Moreover, we were able to provide input and feedback to the Sparkle developers which was always taken seriously.

Here below is the final result in action:

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