Digital Transformation
When the show went virtual due to the pandemic, we had an opportunity to shake things up and present the brand in a new way.
Each year, BDR Thermea, a large international group of companies that manufactures heating systems, participates at ISH, the world’s leading trade fair for HVAC + Water. It’s a show that’s heavy on cylinders and machines but critical for their business. Deals are made over handshakes and heat pumps. Products traditionally dictate over design and experience.
But when the show went virtual due to the pandemic, we had an opportunity to shake things up and present the brand in a new way. We created a series of digital workshops, where we extracted the main industry trends and transformed them into miniature virtual worlds, aptly named vignettes.
Each vignette featured a detailed iconic design crafted to tell a complex story. Some were about trends, others about brands. We organized them into three interconnected worlds, which was tricky because two of the main German brands compete. So, each world had to work independently from one another.
Our global world articulated the company’s messaging and reflected not only its global presence but also the diversity and innovation of the group. And we made each world fully explorable using 360 webGL technology. An overlay layer allowed each vignette to provide multiple types of information, links, forms, all served from a multilingual CMS.
It was a fully loaded dynamic web experience mixing multiple streams of engagement. And an extensive chat, Q&A and alert system was integrated to keep visitors updated and engaged.
It didn’t stop there. To unify the message and give the BDR world a live central location we created the BDR Live Studio. Each day, we ran 9 hours of programming, both live and re-runs, and all the content was shot in a state-of-the-art AR studio. Using Unreal’s realtime rendering, the two virtual stages were created as an extension of the brand worlds. A layer of AR was then added to the virtual studio to support talks with industry experts. The audience was asked to pose questions every 20 minutes and answers were given immediately.
The platform was developed using our own platform and modified to integrate multiple new functionalities.
We also led the complete marketing around the virtual show, developing all aspects of the campaign from strategy to execution, which included unique teasers for each brand in different languages.
We hit BDR’s goals on multiple levels. Their sales team was aching for an innovative brand experience to take their clients through, and we certainly delivered. We helped redefine the industry standard by raising the bar as high as possible while remaining insightful and customer focused. BDR’s Group Communication Manager, Dennis Mikkelsen commented, “Jack Morton managed to perfectly deliver a six-month ambitious, industry first project in three months.”
Impact
The virtual campaign exceeded all expectations
- 8x above sales goal
- 8,881 visits in one week
- 3,084 registrations generated
- 4,879 streaming hours delivered
- 4.3 million impressions
- 10min+ average platform engagement time
- 800+ virtual meetings