Multi-platform live-streamed event spreads positivity to music lovers and benefits CALM
December 16, 2020
Client: Come Play With Me and CALM
Multi-platform live streamed event spreads positivity to music lovers and benefits CALM
The Project
Come Play With Me and Never.no teamed up to produce a multi-platform live-streamed event to promote the release of an album benefitting CALM – the Campaign Against Living Miserably. Never.no produced the event, including animated opening and closing sequences, managed the setup for the presenter and guests, provided live interactive graphics and polling, and streamed the event on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
The Challenge
To round off a flurry of releases and streaming events throughout 2020, Leeds-based record label and magazine Come Play With Me released a compilation album to benefit CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably. Titled “Not From Where I’m Standing”, it features 20 cover versions of James Bond movie themes, performed by The Wedding Present & Friends.
Just over two weeks before the event, a casual email exchange between Tony Ereira, Director at Come Play With Me, Never.No’s Head of Client Services Karl Kathuria, and David Gedge of The Wedding Present, took place to discuss the possibility of producing a multi-platform live-streamed event to support the album launch. Within a couple of hours, the idea started to take shape, and on the 24th November they made the decision to have the event take place on Monday 007th December.
The choice for the date was based on its relation to the Bond theme, and it being just after the album’s launch weekend. With little time to prepare, a running order was created, and guests who appeared on the album were invited to take part. LDC Radio presenter Abi Whistance, who also writes for Come Play With Me, was chosen as presenter. Not only an enthusiastic, skilled presenter, unknown to the team was that she is also a huge fan of The Wedding Present and was incredibly excited to take part.
How we did it:
To help announce the multi-platform live-streamed event, Never.no created a makeshift promo based on the album sleeve, and with a soundtrack created from two of the album’s theme tunes. This was replaced a few days prior to the event by a more advanced motion graphic video that brought elements of the album sleeve to life, and encouraged the potential audience to interact with the hashtag #007December. They also created four separate polls, one for each side of the double album, asking people to pick which of five songs was their favourite original Bond theme. This couldn’t have been done as native Twitter polls, as each poll needed to contain five songs to choose from.
After the guests had been locked in, and video clips created from key tracks on the album, the running order really started to take shape. Two of the guests were unable to commit to the live event itself, so pre-records were set up. A fantastic-looking video frame was created by the Never.no design team in time to capture interviews with Simon Gunning, CEO of CALM, and Dr Jon Stewart, who is not only the guitarist for The Wedding Present and Sleeper, but also a Course Leader at BIMM (Brighton Institute of Modern Music).
The final piece before declaring the live stream ready to go was collecting the exclusive video of David Gedge performing the classic Bond tune “We Have All The Time In The World”, originally performed by Louis Armstrong on the soundtrack to the 1969 film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The final edit was provided 24 hours before the live stream, and slotted into the production schedule. At the same time, the final poll was released, with the winners of the four previous polls. This poll was live both on a web page and as a native Twitter poll, with Bee-On used to compile and aggregate the results.
The results:
With everything in place, the presenter went through a final rehearsal with the Never.no team and everything was in place for the stream to go live on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. At 8pm on December 007, the stream went out as planned, with all live guests brought in and able to contribute at the right times. The results of the poll were displayed live by Bee-On, as were questions from those watching at home.
This was a Never.no production from start to finish. The team was involved in concept creation, greenlighting the event, promotion, running-order creation, opening and closing graphics sequences, script-writing, on-air graphics, guest management, streaming and playout. Bee-On was a crucial part of the event, as it enabled live interactivity on the night, and the broadcast was a classy way to celebrate the launch of the album, giving people a chance to hear some of the songs, listen to the performers, and, most importantly, learn more about and contribute to CALM.
