In less than two weeks more than 200 bands have entered the Royal Beer rock competition by uploading videos and music on RoyalBeer.tv. The campaign is crafted and designed by online agency Stupid Studio and features are beautifully integrated 23 Video solution. The agency were given free hands as to which platform to use as long as the final site could support a competition centered around Kashmir and work as a future brand channel for brewery.

“So we started looking for a video solution that we could integrate on our own terms to avoid being forced into a youtube environment. We needed complete freedom and control in order to integrate videos with related content, so when we encountered 23 Video, we were like, this is it” says project manager Matthias Flugge Hansen.

WordPress Integration

The greatest challenge for Stupid Studio was to make a seamless sign-up flow for the participating bands. Allowing them to upload both music, video and images and being able to control it all in a wordpress setup afterwards. Thus this project is also one of the first to take advantage of the fact that you can use 23 Video to handle audio.

“We have created a wordpress plugin, to make the wordpress integration as smooth as possible, and I must say that we’re pretty happy with the way it turned out. The users of the site can now login to wordpress and control their videos and sound files from there. Apart from that we’ve also worked on customizing the design, we’ve added color coding to the channels and worked on how to trigger related videos, when they get embedded,” says Matthias Flugge Hansen.

During the proces the development team at Stupid Studio have been in close contact with their 100 % human contact from 23. 100% Human is our service program which gives you your personal contact person. We don’t usually talk about it since it’s a regular part of our daily work, but I can’t help to finish this post with the following quote from Matthias Flugge Hansen.

“Its been great working with 23 on this project. The support level is awesome, so the 100 % human concept makes 100 % sense to us.”

The campaign is a great example of the flexibility you get with 23 Video. First thing you’ll notice is the custom background and header, followed by the link colors. But it’s the details that really made us excited. Notice how the player has been redesigned to include elements from the background graphics as well as the hummel-inspired player button. This is exactly what 23 Video is all about. To help out with the technical parts of the site hummel turned to 23 Video partner Re:, so we called Asbjørn Poulsen to get some more insights on how they customized 23 Video to fit hummels needs and give them a visual online presence.

Control related videos

“The Open Upload function was essential since they wanted to make a video competition for their customers and followers. Next was the rating and comment possibilities as they are very interested in feedback and interactions from the viewers. Distribution through Facebook and Twitter was also very important as they’ve build a great presence there,” says Asbjørn Poulsen and adds that the embedding provided an easy way for hummel partners to be part of the project.

However, those features are all out of the box and easy to implement, so the real challenges for Re: was to include more pages and figure out a way to control the related videos in the player.

“It was important for us to control the related videos in the player, so we worked on the categorization a lot and made a tagging system that hummel can use to control how the videos relate to each other,” says Asbjørn Poulsen.

The possibility to get your fingers deep into the code and control even the smallest details is exactly the reasons why Re: keeps recommending 23 Video to their customers.

“23 Video is great to work with. Most clients require features that 23 Video have out of the box, and the possibility to customize everything makes it easy for us meet specific needs. This means we can get a project up and running in no time. On top of that the extensive analytics adds important value and feedback, which is really important when you are experimenting with video online. I simply can’t point to another platform that includes all those features and possibilities at such a low price level,” says Asbjørn Poulsen

The spring winner has just been announced on Playstadil.com and are now playing in theaters, but the competition continues online with the possibility to win sneakers and a fall cinema spot for the next winner.