E Stings is a creative competition run yearly by British TV channel E4, challenging viewers to produce 10 second animations for the channel's on-screen branding idents. Using a set of brand assets provided, viewers have to use their talent, skill and creativity - the quirkier and more unique the better.
For the 2015 competition E4 decided to shake things up a bit and put the power into the hands of their loyal fans - for the first time inviting the public to enter and to vote for the winner via social media. Two prizes of £5,000 were on offer - one for a judges' winner and one for the people's choice winner - and the 16 best entries would have their stings shown on the channel for the next 12–18 months.
The objectives were to encourage viewers to take part in the competition; and then to vote using social media hashtags for their favourite entries; to communicate E4's brand values of coolness, creativity and attitude.
The hub of the competition was a branded microsite for desktop and mobile to call for submissions, and later, view entries and vote for the people's choice winner.
The first phase of the site launched the contest, providing downloadable assets, and showcasing previous years' winning entries for inspiration. The site was promoted across broadcast channels and social media accounts. People could submit their entries simply via uploading to YouTube and sending us a tweet.
All entries were pulled into our moderation system, judged, and the best 16 were chosen. An overall judges winner was selected as the greatest E Sting of the lot, winning a whopping £5,000.
In the second phase of the site, we allowed fans of E4 to pick their favourite E Sting. The top sixteen entries chosen by the judges went through to a televised daily head-to-head knock-out tournament, with the contest promoted throughout each day across the TV channel and social media accounts. The audience were able to vote for their favourite via a hashtag on Twitter, with the winner each day going through to the next round. Over the course of four rounds, the E Stings People's Choice award winner was finally chosen, also nabbing a tidy £5k. The site was updated continually throughout the day, and included a countdown to each vote closing to build the urgency and excitement.
A bespoke CMS was built to publish entries, winners, and show a live count of the votes cast so far. This greatly simplified the publishing process across the weeks it ran. The site back end was tied in to social media APIs, and the channel's online publishing platform architecture.
Voting using hashtags allowed creators to campaign for their own entries, and for the campaign's messaging to be amplified across social networks.
Over 1,000 custom stings were submitted, and tens of thousands of votes cast over the three weeks of head-to-heads. There were 3 million impressions on Twitter and over 15 millions views of the TV ads, increasing E4's reputation as an innovative, creative and downright fun place to be.
