National Movie Awards, Indigo Television - Case Study

Brief

The National Movie Awards (NMAs) needed a new website with a secure and robust online voting system to support the UKs biggest publicly voted movie awards. Voting was to take place over a 10 day period, preceded by a national media campaign to raise awareness and drive traffic.

Solution

To accommodate the widest audience the site was built to strict usability and accessibility standards and designed to degrade gracefully (for older browsers, users without Flash and so on). Huge spikes in site traffic over the voting period were anticipated, so custom hosting that allowed for such intense periods of activity was implemented. Security measures were put in place to ensure the public vote was fair, and in addition, we monitored the voting on a daily basis for any suspicious activity (as it turned out, there wasn't any). The site had four states: pre-vote; vote (including the announcement of the nominees); post vote and post ceremony.

Result

35,000 unique visitors were recorded using the site within 24 hours of the vote opening (creating 340,000 page views). The site accommodated the large numbers of visitors and no slow-down was experienced, even during the most intense periods of activity. Our security measures held up too, and the daily monitoring provided extra peace of mind for our client. In total 350,000 votes were recorded through the site (verified by an independent adjudicator). The results were broadcast on ITV1 on Wednesday May 26, 2010, which preceded another massive spike in site traffic.

Incase you missed the show, the winners are as follows:

  • ACTION/THRILLER: Sherlock Holmes
  • FAMILY: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  • FANTASY: The Twilight Saga: New Moon
  • MOST ANTICIPATED MOVIE OF THE SUMMER: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
  • BREAKTHROUGH MOVIE: The Time Traveler's Wife
  • PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR: Robert Pattinson
  • SPECIAL RECOGNITION: Harry Potter
  • SCREEN ICON: Tom Cruise

Statistics

  • Over 350,000 individual votes cast in 10 days
  • 120,000 individual votes cast in the first 24 hours
  • 35,000 unique visitors in the first 24 hours

Link to project

nationalmovieawards.com

"Ten4 were incredibly flexible when it came to our project for the National Movie Awards. The visual content was dynamic and the back-end hugely functional and provided easy access to the data. We praise them very highly indeed."
Pete Nichols
Associate Producer, Indigo Television