VSAllAccess Online Experience powered by Microsoft Silverlight
Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will be broadcast free over-the-air (OTA) to your HDTV on CBS. For online promotion, VS and Microsoft went to digital creatives from Big Spaceship for an engaging web experience using Silverlight.
This may mark VS‘s triumphant return to the internet. It was nearly ten years ago VS had one of the earliest webcast. Before hitting the airwaves, the Fashion Show, if you believe the internet, served up to 2 million streams and left many more viewers disappointed.
In case VS fashion wasn’t visually compelling enough, VSAllAccess was created to increase buzz, via the web, leading into Tuesday’s broadcast. Microsoft was able to involve its challenger technology to Adobe’s Flash for interactive portions of VSAllAccess‘s user experience. The results speak for themselves, but here’s Microsoft‘s blog giving credit where credit is due to team Big Spaceship.
In fact throughout the whole Victoria’s Secret Fashion experience you keep finding these little visual gems where Big Spaceship has used a feature of Silverlight 3 to add additional visual punch to the overall experience. What’s great is the tight and refined way these features have been used and that really helps this project stand out.
Prior to the live event, VSAllAccess provides
- runway model contest
- videos
- an image gallery
Mobile access is available with free iPhone application: The Fashion Show and once the show airs, VSAllAccess offers exclusive behind the scenes footage. If nothing else, the website proved valuable to models themselves to check their status in the runway contest (see video below).
VS has clearly seen viewers shift their leisure time, and dollars, from OTA to online. But why no return to Over-the-top (OTT)? VS was one of the pioneers of live streaming of marquee events. There is also a visible lack of web 2.0 tools on VSAllAccess. Where’s access to
- or even Windows Live, from Microsoft
Maybe these are questions for the creatives. Big Spaceship may certainly point to their work order and say it was not there. Does it fall back to the client? They may not always be on top of what is the latest and greatest online technology. In this case, fashion is VS‘s core business, but you can bet they know about Facebook and twitter. This may be a case where success and blame may be shared. After all, VS was convinced to use Silverlight over Flash.
Big Spaceship did a great job putting a visually and technologically stunning site together and thoughts on the project, using Silverlight, and how it compares to Flash may be found on their blog. And thanks to their work on the web, CBS may get a few more eyeballs on their HDTV displays for the Fashion Show. Happy viewing.
Tags: adobe flash, Big Spaceship, Broadcast, CBS, event, Fashion, Fashion Show, HDTV, Internet, iphone, Microsoft, online, OTT, silverlight, Technology, Victoria's Secret, VSAllAccess, web 2.0, webcast
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