“Looking for a shit hot Ning programmer”

That is how RAAK first came to hear about the MTV project for the European Union: through a Twitter message.

RAAK's CanEUHearme

>> The brief
MTV was tasked by the European Union (EU) to increase awareness about the upcoming EU elections amongst young people. And energise them to take part.
The core idea was built around ‘The Shout’, giving young people the chance to make their voice heard. This would be done through 3 events, a tv campaign and an online presence.
To achieve these objectives online, the EU wanted to build a bespoke social network where young people could interact around a common European-ness.

Importantly we were only six weeks away from the launch date.

>> The RAAK approach
At RAAK we think before doing.
We don’t just want to build or produce interesting media for the sake of it, we want it to work for its intended users and meet objectives.

There are now a number of very cool platforms and tools with which bespoke social networks can be built, like Ning, the open source Elgg and also BuddyPress.

However, building a bespoke social network – that gets user traction – is not desirable or even possible in all circumstances. It takes time.
In this case we felt it was much more effective to create a site that ties in strongly with the use of existing social networks where the users are already active and have strong connections.

>> RAAK’s pitch
Videos are a good way of driving traffic, especially if you have star attractions like Depeche Mode. Same with competitions. So those 2 elements were an obvious part of our proposal.

But once we have the eyeballs we want to draw the users in deeper.

We suggested to build a forum where users could debate issues round the EU. But making forums work is notoriously hard, so we suggested a Twitter Forum using hashtags. This was a much easier way to engage from a user point of view because people take part on their own terms.
We guided MTV on moderation & Twitter policies to maximise constructive participation.

We also allowed blog-style comments on the videos and created a Shout Box where people could leave short messages.
We gave people the option to do this using Facebook Connect, allowing users to send their comments to their Facebook newsfeeds for that extra viral impact.
FB Connect was also integrated in the Polls, where people could voice their opinion about European issues.

MTV also wanted something that reflected the buzz of an event, a virtual party. Because of considerable time and budget restrictions, we suggested covering the Shout-events live using Qik. Live video streaming through mobile phones. We ‘live edited’ what streams were most prominent on the site by switching between videos.

We delivered www.caneuhearme.eu on time, in 23 European languages (yes, in six weeks!) and launched several new sections to the site to encourage repeat visits.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

>> Pros
The CanEUhearme site ranked #3 for first week traffic volume (Unique Visitors) behind only two movies’ micro sites, Indiana Jones and Iron Man.

On the Caneuhearme site we had far over 50,000 unique visitors in two months, who viewed on average 2.5 pages and spent nearly 2 minutes on the site.

The site generated hundreds of “Shouts” from users across Europe.

But it was the Twitter discussion page and discussions and hashtags that proved to be the most popular. We believe the site became a hub for people interested in and disaffected with the European Union, with debates and conversations starting on the site and elsewhere.

>> Cons
Neither ourselves nor MTV could get Flickr to play along. So we had to abandon using their service (the Flickr API) and rebuild the Competition engine and gallery from scratch.

To brag a bit, we also feel that an integrated campaign, where RAAK produced the video, wrote the copy and steered the Twitter accounts, would have made for tighter messaging and even better conversations.

>> Coverage and links
The site was written about and linked to from numerous sites including the BBC, Brand Republic, and dozens of blogs including that of Le Monde, the NRC Handelsblad. And it had its naysayers.

Some other sites and blogs that linked to the project include:
Codice Internet
Democracia Electrónica
Jessica Best – European elections for dummies
politicaduepuntozero
institute
Persiguiendo Sueños
EUROBITÁCORA
The Veronicas
Bloc de Pia Bosch
Blogspace
EU observer

So far Google has counted over 250 backlinks to the site, with a Pagerank of 6.

We’d been working for the lovely people from 3VOOR12 for a while, creating a magazine show for tv and developing a visual-radio live-broadcast solution for internet-streaming on location.
So we knew and understood the brand very well. 3VOOR12 is Holland’s most important alternative music portal. They’ve been doing internet radio since the dark ages and mobile streaming since the semi-dark ages. They’re known their innovation, for their credibility and for their out-of-the-box-thinking. Nowhere in the world can you see a death metal video and then a Dutch hiphop act.
As part of their target to cover all platforms, they’d been running 2 semi-automated music channels online for a while, but it wasn’t getting much attention and it was becoming cluttered.
To add more clarity, we streamlined the scheduled, created a promo strategy and gave the in-house team a brief and tools that allowed them to re-brand certain aspects of the channel.

But 3VOOR12.TV couldn’t be seen to become a ‘proper’ tv channel, that would have been suicide. So we made sure the promo and schedule strategy wasn’t repetitive, that it wasn’t patronising.
And we added some interactivity. We developed ‘My3VOOR12′, a show where users could submit their own 30 minutes of music video programming. Plus an interactive chart, voted for online and via the Red Button.

But the program that got the awards-people excited was ‘White Noise’. Based on the concept of visualising radio (which the guys at VPRO had been exploring for a while), the plan was to do something special for DJ Dave Clarke’s weekly 2 hour-set on one of their radio stations. So the idea came about that it would nice for people to type in keywords (online and through their tv remote) and that those words would pull in picture from the Flickr archives. Which, in turn, would be cut together on the beat of the music. It worked a treat, thanks to the great programming work from the guys at Do-Tank.