MUSE 2: it ain't over till the fat lady sings...metroCode and the MUSE mini projects

For MUSE 2 metroCode worked with Jason Mogus and Phillip Djwa to help fulfill the project's cultural engagement program, providing mobile strategies in collaboration with local arts and culture groups. Our first project was with local independent music label Mint Records, for their "Ridiculously Early Christmas Party", held the first weekend of December 2006.  

The metroCode / Mint cell phone campaign was hosted by guerilla journalist and Much Music personality Nardwuar the Human Serviette and featured musical selections of each of the bands performing at the event, general ticket and event information, and a special Christmas clip from rapper Snoop Dogg, (introduced as 'a guy who says ho ho ho all year long'). Now that's entertainment value. The multi-band extravaganza was a sell-out and made international music headlines as UK pop star Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand was in the audience that night and jumped on stage for a rousing rendition of his band's anthemic hit "Take Me Out". For those that missed it, fret not. Join the 11,000 + who have viewed the magical musical moment on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfb1ZnCRU_U). Hint: If you go to around 2:15 in the clip you'll go straight to the gold. We did surveys on site that night and our friends at CBC RAdio 3, who were MC'ing the event, helped promote the fact that we were giving out Hershey's kisses and candy canes to everyone who filled out a survey. It was a lot of fun and a great kick off for the MUSE mini-projects.

Our next MUSE mini project was with Coastal Jazz, the people who bring us the TD Canada Trust INternational Jazz Festival, one of Vancouver's biggest

arts events of the year. metroCode worked with Coastal Jazz to create a 'talking poster' for their 2nd annual Winterruption Festival, a combination art, music, theatre, film, and performance festival centred on Granville Island the 3rd weekend of February.  The content was straightforward program guide information, sectioned into menu options (press 1 for music events, press 2 for theatre events, press 3 for film, etc) and the event was promoted on transit shelters and throughout the city via print ads and posters.  The idea that you could call up a poster and turn it into an interactive festival guide is a new one; as the 'call to action' on the posters wasn't particularly strong, the response to the Winterruption cell phone campaign was modest. We received feedback about how the poster itself needed a stronger message about what the festival was, that the idea that you could call the poster was not well-communicated, and that if you actually made the call that the content was too lengthy and that people wanted didn't want to hear a single voice reading a long list of things. Lesson learned: mobile is not an information line; mobile is not radio. We need to focus on the urgency/immediacy associated with the very nature of cell phone themselves and provide people with satisfying interstitials, little stabs of wonderment.

And, then along came the dream project. The opportunity to work with Vancouver Opera on a cell phone campaign for their final show of the season, the legendary Tosca.  Doug Tuck, the director of audience development at the Opera is completely committed to doing just that...developing the audience for Opera. They know they've already got the older culture crowd. They want to get the iPod and cell phone crowd. Taking into account what we learned from our previous projects Doug and I worked together on the concept of a narrative sprinkled around the city...Tosca tidbits with unique metroCodes that can work as stand-alone clips or in any sequence. The net result being that in 30-45 second increments anyone from an opera innocent to an opera afficionado could get pulled in by the mobile narratives.

Doug got CBC on board as a partner and CBC offered up news anchor Gloria Macarenko to host the Tosca cell phone campaign. Doug, a former CBC Radio producer (he worked on Vicki Gabereau's show throughout the 90s) did an exquisite job with the content, parsing up the story of Tosca into nine audio vignettes; 3 from each act.

We also knew that a loud and clear call to action on the signage for Tosca was needed...and we're talking serious signage...sides of buses, transit shelters, 1200 posters around the city in all.  And so was born the singing poster. The Vancouver Sun featured the story on the front page of their Arts & Life Section on Saturday March 24th, promoting the campaign as "Dial a Diva" (ed. note: wish I came up with that line). 4 days later I received a call for an opera company in the US who wants to know if we can do the same for them. (Tech lead NIck is looking into this as we'll need to look at cross-border issues related to IVR, shortcodes, etc...info TBA)

The Tosca cell phone campaign is live now and runs through to the end of April. If you want to hear the content you can dial into metroCode at 604-638-2661 and enter codes 0027 through 0035. I consider the Tosca cell phone project a model MUSE project...one in which motivated groups with complementary skill sets worked together to pull off something truly unique.

We'll be keeping a keen eye on the IVR log files so we can monitor the call volume and report back to the Opera. The next step in the sequence will be linking calls to ticket purchases, which is in the development path for the future.  Thanks to the efforts of Mobile MUSE, the cultural engagement program, the Vancouver Opera and CBC we've created a new interface, and what we hope is a new audience. for Vancouver Opera.

For more on the metroCode/MUSE mini projects see: http://www.metrocode.net/news.html