5 ms·

How AT&T Integrated Olympic Results Into Its Ads So Darn Fast

37 points by daegloe 14y ago

te_chris 14y ago
So, exactly how you'd expect them to then?
- timmaah 14y ago
  Yeah.. not exactly hackerish.. They did the same shot 100's of times and just picked the one off the shelf that matched the swimmers time.
  - blakerson 14y ago
    So it's hustle-ish instead of hacker-ish. Still worked. edit: it's worth bearing in mind that this could be still hack-worthy given the unmentioned, and probably many, constraints created by the broadcast TV business.
  - runako 14y ago
    You're essentially saying that sprites (which this technique more or less maps to) are not "hackerish." I'd disagree.
- biot 14y ago
  I would have liked to see some sort of continuous integration going on. The assets are the winning clip, athlete (name, gender, sport), winning result, and whatever other metadata they need. Once all those are fed in, a build process is automatically triggered which constructs the completed commercial by integrating the clip into an appropriate base commercial (overlaid green screen, audio track), outputting the result on a whiteboard by displaying the first part of the time off-camera using a hand-drawn font (for the "4:05." part in the commercial) and then animating the hand to draw the remaining digits. Once all is rendered, it triggers an approval process by the agency and then by AT&T/NBC and, 5 minutes later, the commercial goes live. That's how I'd want to do it. Perhaps there is also Olympic committee approval, FCC involvement... who knows what other regulations they need to jump through.
- Jabbles 14y ago
  I expected them to use a hand-model for watching "someone with a sleeve write on a whiteboard". I have seen adverts for live odds* which, according to the smallprint are up-to-date within 30 seconds. *not Olympics
Dylan16807 14y ago
I really like this story. Why? Because they do all this work to get the ads prebuilt and put together immediately, and then the process with waiting for approval takes an entire day. Compare to old spice throwing up videos in half an hour.
- ryanwaggoner 14y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, the Old Spice videos that were going out in 30 mins (or less) were going out online, not on (very expensive) broadcast.
- eriktrautman 14y ago
  The Olympics have very strict broadcast rules and everything that goes out needs to get pre-approval. Even just given that hurdle, it's a pretty remarkable achievement.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rythie 14y ago
When I saw the title (not living in the U.S.) I thought 'darn fast' would be the next advert break after it happened. Surely this type of ad could be pre-approved, since they only bit that will change is the sports footage, which has already been on TV by that point anyway.
- aes256 14y ago
  Same. I thought this was going to be along the lines of the betting ads we have in the UK, where the latest odds for sporting events (accurate to within a minute, I believe) are fed into TV adverts during or immediately before those event broadcasts. A 24-hour turn-around only seems impressive relative to the amount of time it normally takes to produce such an ad, which most viewers won't appreciate.
chimi 14y ago
I wish AT&T would put as much time, thought and money into creating a reliable product with good customer service as they do on marketing.
- timjahn 14y ago
  When I was an AT&T customer (Sprint now), this is something I genuinely never understood. I constantly found myself chuckling at the AT&T commercials (which were actually funny) but always wondering why they were so good at marketing but so horrible at the actual product they sell.
- jbigelow76 14y ago
  If they get the marketing right then reliable product and customer service take care of themselves. Now wouldn't you like to sign this two year contract with early termination fee to get your subsidized shiny new iPhone ;)
sil3ntmac 14y ago
Haha, our definitions of "darn fast" are a little different I think. Has anyone told this guy that NBC's Olympics are not in "near realtime" ?
webwanderings 14y ago
This was indeed a genius idea. It sort of reminds us how a TV camera and a TV itself overpowers the Web, and proves that TV is still a very powerful medium. Just look at the Internet as a whole and look at what we see through those TV cameras. The poverty of the Internet is so obvious. Whatever may be the outcome of NBC's time-delayed prime-time broadcast of Olympics, one thing is obvious....they have clearly used the latest technology of Internet and the latest technology of Cameras, integrating the drama-creation aspect (Hollywood's legacy) to present something to the US audience (don't know about the world) a very captivating and powerful experience. The Ads here are only complementing the process.

37 points by daegloe 14y ago

te_chris 14y ago

So, exactly how you'd expect them to then?

timmaah 14y ago
Yeah.. not exactly hackerish.. They did the same shot 100's of times and just picked the one off the shelf that matched the swimmers time.
- blakerson 14y ago
  So it's hustle-ish instead of hacker-ish. Still worked. edit: it's worth bearing in mind that this could be still hack-worthy given the unmentioned, and probably many, constraints created by the broadcast TV business.
- runako 14y ago
  You're essentially saying that sprites (which this technique more or less maps to) are not "hackerish." I'd disagree.
biot 14y ago
I would have liked to see some sort of continuous integration going on. The assets are the winning clip, athlete (name, gender, sport), winning result, and whatever other metadata they need. Once all those are fed in, a build process is automatically triggered which constructs the completed commercial by integrating the clip into an appropriate base commercial (overlaid green screen, audio track), outputting the result on a whiteboard by displaying the first part of the time off-camera using a hand-drawn font (for the "4:05." part in the commercial) and then animating the hand to draw the remaining digits. Once all is rendered, it triggers an approval process by the agency and then by AT&T/NBC and, 5 minutes later, the commercial goes live. That's how I'd want to do it. Perhaps there is also Olympic committee approval, FCC involvement... who knows what other regulations they need to jump through.
Jabbles 14y ago
I expected them to use a hand-model for watching "someone with a sleeve write on a whiteboard". I have seen adverts for live odds* which, according to the smallprint are up-to-date within 30 seconds. *not Olympics

Dylan16807 14y ago

I really like this story. Why? Because they do all this work to get the ads prebuilt and put together immediately, and then the process with waiting for approval takes an entire day. Compare to old spice throwing up videos in half an hour.

ryanwaggoner 14y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, the Old Spice videos that were going out in 30 mins (or less) were going out online, not on (very expensive) broadcast.
eriktrautman 14y ago
The Olympics have very strict broadcast rules and everything that goes out needs to get pre-approval. Even just given that hurdle, it's a pretty remarkable achievement.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

rythie 14y ago

When I saw the title (not living in the U.S.) I thought 'darn fast' would be the next advert break after it happened. Surely this type of ad could be pre-approved, since they only bit that will change is the sports footage, which has already been on TV by that point anyway.

aes256 14y ago
Same. I thought this was going to be along the lines of the betting ads we have in the UK, where the latest odds for sporting events (accurate to within a minute, I believe) are fed into TV adverts during or immediately before those event broadcasts. A 24-hour turn-around only seems impressive relative to the amount of time it normally takes to produce such an ad, which most viewers won't appreciate.

chimi 14y ago

I wish AT&T would put as much time, thought and money into creating a reliable product with good customer service as they do on marketing.

timjahn 14y ago
When I was an AT&T customer (Sprint now), this is something I genuinely never understood. I constantly found myself chuckling at the AT&T commercials (which were actually funny) but always wondering why they were so good at marketing but so horrible at the actual product they sell.
jbigelow76 14y ago
If they get the marketing right then reliable product and customer service take care of themselves. Now wouldn't you like to sign this two year contract with early termination fee to get your subsidized shiny new iPhone ;)

sil3ntmac 14y ago

Haha, our definitions of "darn fast" are a little different I think. Has anyone told this guy that NBC's Olympics are not in "near realtime" ?

webwanderings 14y ago

This was indeed a genius idea. It sort of reminds us how a TV camera and a TV itself overpowers the Web, and proves that TV is still a very powerful medium. Just look at the Internet as a whole and look at what we see through those TV cameras. The poverty of the Internet is so obvious. Whatever may be the outcome of NBC's time-delayed prime-time broadcast of Olympics, one thing is obvious....they have clearly used the latest technology of Internet and the latest technology of Cameras, integrating the drama-creation aspect (Hollywood's legacy) to present something to the US audience (don't know about the world) a very captivating and powerful experience. The Ads here are only complementing the process.