EE are long term sponsors of BAFTA, a celebrated cultural moment in the British calendar. Each year, celebrities from across the globe gather, bringing the glamour, the outfits, and the red carpet which drives excitement and conversation online. It’s a rare opportunity for people to feel closer to the stars.

The brief was to establish an association between EE and BAFTA, demonstrating the superiority of EE’s network and their commitment to providing the best consumer-first experience to the UK population.

We were measured on our ability to reach our audience and generate share of voice, driving relevance as evidenced through attention/views, and delivering an engaging participatory experience that added genuine value. All of this with only a small reserved section off the red carpet to play with.

So, how could EE help fans feel closer to the stars, whilst demonstrating their superior network – now with latest 5G technology?

The world’s first 5G A.I Stylist:

Helping you shop affordable red carpet fashion live at the BAFTA’s.

Research showed that fashion dominated the conversation at the BAFTA, with 33%* of fans wanting to purchase the looks of their favourite celebrity. However, with the average look costing over £12k star style is out of reach for most. We leveraged a new social phenomenon and innovative technologies to transform the world’s first CGI Supermodel into the world’s first 5G AI Stylist. As a result, blurring the lines between the digital and real worlds. We gave our influencer the power to do what no human could do. She was able to cross-reference thousands of retailers, in a matter of seconds, and deliver affordable red carpet fashion to fans at home, accessible via a few simple taps on their devices.

Our audience for this campaign were digital savvy celeb/motion picture followers who will excitedly tune in to watch BAFTA on the night. They actively engage in conversation and value participatory experiences over something passive. Social listening highlighted fashion as the dominant topic of conversation around galas like BAFTA, with Twitter and Instagram standing out as platforms due to their conversational and visual natures. One Twitter study found that 33% had an appetite to buy the outfits on display, so they’re tuning in for inspiration as well as admiration. However, after some digging we discovered that the average cost of celeb garments exceeds £12k – therefore cost and accessibility present monumental barriers between fans and their style icons. Our approach was to use cutting-edge technology to remove this barrier and deliver a seamless and engaging experience through those channels that they’d be using throughout the night.

As fans tuned in for the live coverage they were served real-time updates across social platforms, providing them with a first look at celebrity style and driving traffic to our AI Stylist webchat, hosted by the world’s first CGI supermodel Shudu. Here Shudu was brought to life in a simple low-barrier to entry chat interface that allowed fans to instantly discover affordable alternatives. Powered by Snap Tech’s machine learning capabilities, we analysed the garments and cross-referenced them across thousands of affordable ecommerce retailers. As a result, fans were then able to click-through to purchase within minutes of a star stepping onto the carpet.

However, none of this would have been possible without red carpet engagement. So, how do you get an A-lister to pay attention and actively participate in the activity? It requires a spectacular experience.

We constructed an Unreal4 game engine model of Shudu to deliver a full range of lifelike movement. Holographic technology was then used to bring this to life on the red carpet. With the capabilities of EE’s 5G network, Shudu could interact with celebrities in real-time and, with access to multiple Google Pixel devices, capture the stars, their outfits and share with fans via social.

Captivated by our red carpet experience, stars such as Salma Hayek, Andy Serkis and Regina King engaged Shudu. This inspired a whopping 113k engagements with our AI Stylist chat, delivering over 2k personalised red carpet looks to fans at home. Whilst not a key objective of the campaign, these curated looks generated value in excess of £400k to retailers.

The spectacular nature of both, the red carpet experience and the intelligent AI Stylist chat, ensured a dominant presence on the night with a huge 27% of all mentions of BAFTA (on the night) also referencing EE. Amongst other sponsors of the event, this translated to a share of voice of over 93%.

Above all, demonstrating the capabilities of UK’s best network and reinforcing EE’s commitment to being the most culturally relevant and advanced digital communications company, with the consumer at the heart.