When we say Lionel – who do you think of? OK, Richie… but when we say Messi – who do you think of? Well, there’s only one Lionel A Messi and as some of the more eager wireWAX beavers will have noted, last week saw arguably the world’s greatest footballer post to his 45 million strong fans that he had his own museum, courtesy of his sponsor Adidas! Yes! Well, ‘yes’ if you were in the home of the museum in Barcelona. Sad face if you were in-fact in Barnsley or Brooklyn.

Barnsley: no Messi Museum

So, Adidas asked their agency, Iris to think about ways in which they could make the gallery accessible beyond Spanish federal borders. Iris picked up the phone. It was time to press the ‘wireWAX button’.

wireWAX Button: Installed in the offices of brands, broadcasters and agencies the world over

In all seriousness we’ve been tremendously impressed by Iris. We’re delighted to say wireWAX is used by thousands of free users and over 60 top brands, broadcasters and agencies to make video as interesting and interactive as the web around it. Brands often use wireWAX directly to make their videos shoppable or the experience more memorable and engaging, but agencies have a significant part to play in making those signature campaigns, those defining experiences that push wireWAX further.

That said, there are few agencies who see wireWAX one week and have a project live the next. It’s testament to both ballsy creative acumen and wireWAX’s rapid, customisable platform that this incredible experience was concepted, shot, edited and tagged in just 1 week.

The video, now live on Team Messi Facebook and soon across the world of internets allows you, the humble *INSERT LOCATION HERE* viewer to walk through the museum with that natural inquisitive eye and, as you would in the museum, stop to look at memorabilia from Messi’s illustrious career so far. You can get background on his 4 Ballon d’Or awards by just clicking on them, you can see an exclusive behind-the-scenes video, buy the boots from his collection and even enter a competition – all within the video, on click and on touch (yes, mobile too) and all in your own language (it works that out as well!). It’s a truly engaging experience. But, don’t take our word for it. In just one week we’ve seen over 154% interaction rates and fans lingering on content for nearly 40 seconds. It’s obscene! And in a time when wireWAX’s shoppable prowess is grabbing the headlines, a great reminder that experience-led content with ‘interactive’ as 50% of the creative campaign can reward both viewers and content creators in digital spades.

Just one of Messi’s shiny shiny trophies in a wireWAX overlay!

Well done Team Messi and Iris.

Like and see it for yourself!

https://www.facebook.com/TeamMessi/app_102282156628566?ref=ts

The stats are in! We can now reveal how the UK consumes its news.

When the UK wakes, when it sleeps, when it thinks about another cuppa and how it consumes its news – it’s all been revealed thanks to a humongous BBC and wireWAX collaboration that launched last week.

When the world’s largest news organisation comes knocking, we answer and we couldn’t have been more amped when BBC News came to us with an idea to create a beautiful interactive mini-doco with wireWAX technology.

The interactive experience was to be a digital exposé of the ongoing impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. 3 years after the ultra-deepwater drilling rig exploded, took the lives of 11 crewmen and caused the largest offshore oil spill in US history the lives of thousands of local residents are still affected.

The innovative use of wireWAX would allow viewers to click oil workers, hoteliers and objects in the main ‘trunk’ video to ‘branch off’ and watch extra stories of those affected; or see animated charts and hard-hitting statistics illustrating the real impact.

Over the weeks leading up to the 3-year anniversary, a very talented BBC News team created a series of clips and interviews in and around the Gulf of Mexico; while, back in London the wireWAX elements were being built and pressure-tested for desktop and mobile. So encouraged by the result, senior news execs were keen to see the video promoted on the BBC News homepage for the 24hrs of the anniversary. As a result, the video would attract hundreds of thousands of views and interactions.

No stranger to high-demand, mahoosive numbers of viewings and mega-spikes in activity, wireWAX is certainly capable of delivering an unprecedented quality of service. However, this was the first time a wireWAX video would be promoted in such a prominent manner and in such a busy week for news – it was a priceless opportunity to monitor viewer behaviour over a typical working day.

From 1am BST on April 19th the Deepwater Horizon story was launched to much fanfare and promoted as an interactive feature on the BBC News homepage as promised.

The video featured on BBC News online in the UK and International editions WOO!

The viewing numbers have been counted and verified and they paint a fascinating picture of how the country interacted with the content and how it goes about its daily business.

The number of viewers from all over the British Isles grew steadily into hundreds of thousands as morning broke and left a fascinatingly wobbly chart in its wake throughout the day. The interaction rates were even more impressive, consistently hovering around 90% – 9 out of 10 viewers consumed at least one extra piece of wireWAX content during the experience.

Not only this but the pattern of viewings throughout the day illustrated an intriguing pattern of human behaviour for a normal friday. Views rapidly accumulated as Britain woke and consumed its news fix. Viewings take an inexplicable dip at mid-morning… while perhaps, erm.. Facebook activity may spike :/

Numbers return to rapid growth approaching midday before a double-dip to coincide with the 12pm or 1pm luncheon dash to Pret.

A peak after lunch is followed by a slow but steady drop-off as the taste for a friday night, pint-sized refreshment teases the British workforce.

The home commute at 5pm punches the last distinctive wedge in the plotted numbers and then tails off into the night as we all switch off for the day.

Viewers given opportunity to click on key characters and objects within the video!

Keen followers of wireWAX will know early commercial adopters of the technology have mainly created shoppable video experiences but, BBC News’ use of wireWAX is an inspired exploration of how the technology can be used to advance video storytelling and developing interactive news experiences.

The ability to offer viewers more content and information, all at the click (or touch – it’s available on mobile and tablet too, wireWAX addicts!) of a moving person or object is – not only an exciting way to increase engagement – but a way to give viewers access to deeper, richer content when they want it.

See and hear more from video-in-video and even get animated statistics and breakdowns around the disaster and its aftermath.

This recent collaboration is further evidence that the BBC is still keen to be at the forefront of innovation and progress and to coincide with their 90 year anniversary this demonstrates their continued determination to find new and better ways to communicate with audiences.

The wheel! The human species most circular achievement.

Fire, the wheel, man steps foot on the moon…

wireWAX has its own share of achievements which we like to believe sit equally alongside these past awesome human accomplishments. Apart from being the first taggable video tool, creating motion tracking hotspots and our long list of user widgets, you would be hard pressed to believe that we had much more to do. Rest assured this is only the beginning and in fact last week saw the start of a whole new list of achievements, starting with this exciting announcement:

Our taggable, touchable technology has finally hit YouTube.

Caveman filming first fire, going to upload to wireWAX to tag the flames to show his friends.

Some of you may remember that back in August, after passing numerous technical compliance tests, we received the green light from the folks at the biggest video platform in the Universe. Like the well known phrase ‘all good things come to those who wait’, it took time to get the wheels in motion, but after much anticipation, it was January 2013 that we finally saw Nike (no stranger to wireWAX, having created a number of interactive wireWAX videos in the past), bring about this global first and boy was it worth waiting for.

So why the excitement? Well apart from attracting 800 million users, accumulating over 4 billion hours viewed everyday and having 72 hours of video uploaded every minute, YouTube at present has only dipped its toes into the taggable, shoppable video game, with its basic annotations tool. Nike’s use of wireWAX sees a huge leap forward from these basic annotations. A leap that many brands have been crying out for on YouTube for some time.

Neil was gutted he left his camcorder at home, he really wanted to try out tagging Buzz and the rest of the lads on the moon.

And what better way to begin our interactive assault on YouTube than on a beautifully executed interactive video from said sportswear giants, Nike. The video, built around Nike’s global #makeitcount campaign, allows viewers to click or touch tags and see the goal that the on screen athlete has set themselves. Mobot fans will be excited by the appearance of Mo Farah, along with other superstars such as Alex Morgan and Serena Williams who each leave a pledge for 2013. The viewer can then join in and share these goals on Facebook, tweet the goal on Twitter, join the community and even listen to or buy the soundtrack (an amazing, uplifting, beat-pounding track by Tim Myers called ‘Get Together’) … all within the video created with wireWAX.

For Nike this has proved a hugely successful way of interacting with its ever growing community of followers, an ongoing aspiration that is crucial for them to achieve. From the beginning it was paramount for Nike that interactivity would be the centre of their campaign, allowing their followers to share in the experience and join others like them, not simply being a straight click to shop video as we have seen before.

Present day awesomeness, wireWAX on YouTube.

For those who have not seen the video yet (then what in the name of biscuits are you waiting for?) it is currently on the Nike YouTube channel front page.

and also on Nike.com

Those with a branded channel and who are advertising with YouTube have no reason to wait anymore. With Nike’s exemplary example of what can be achieved with wireWAX and YouTube, it should be easy to see how you can reach out to your viewers and really engage through some super interactive hotspot technology on your video content.

Get wireWAXing YouTubers!

A hilarious merging of the flags of two great nations.

When clumsy British mastermind, Sir Walter Raleigh first stepped foot on the great land of the Americas 420 years ago, it was a pivotal and tumultuous point in the history of mankind. Fortunately, his failed attempt to tame the Home of the Brave led the way for future, more successful settlements and Britain became… erm… the most influential and important colonizers of the New World! (according to my Grandad).

A slightly sozzled Sir Walter Raleigh on arrival state-side.

Similarly to the way the people of little Britain went on to infiltrate and influence the majority of the people of Earth all those years ago, spreading the use of the awkward handshake, the twizzled moustache and a jolly good knees-up, wireWAX is spreading its army of (thankfully, significantly less brutal) advocates. Not based on military, financial or bumbling might but with a half-decent piece of video technology that actually changes lives (or, perhaps just videos) for the better!

Over the last year, new wireWAX users, in that funny old land they call the ‘United States of America’, where people say things like, ‘get yo fanny in tha house y’all bitches!’, and, ‘Sup bud? Get me sum of that moonshine be fo I bust yo janky butt’ – have surpassed the rest of the world by some significant margin. They’ve rapidly embraced the potential to make their unintelligent video content infinitely more interactive and have found solace warmly embraced in the arms of the world’s first taggable video platform.

Churchill and Truman share a chuckle over non-wireWAX videos.

wireWAX continues to annihilate barriers to clickable/touchable video; bringing self-serve taggable video to the masses around the globe. And, in that place across the pond, where they don’t know their crisps from their loos, they’ve taken to tagging videos like a British Bulldog in a china shop – giving video a proper good shake about the aloominum knickers.

For that reason it made perfect sense for the British to once again lay claim to a miniscule part of American soil to support and represent our cousins embarking on a fundamental change to their video outlook. So, it’s only the beginning of a larger global presence but what better way to start than with our old chums across the pond and once again uphold a small change to the ways of thinking of another nation.

If you’re lucky enough to be a wireWAX fan in the Land of the Free you now have full, rubber-stamped, Royal approval to crack on, safe in the knowledge you have the support and double thumbs-up from your good friends in residence. Onwards and upwards America!

Since the idea for wireWAX was first conceived a common question has always plagued the minds of our team and, of course, our delightful users – ‘Will we ever see the wondrous wireWAX taggable video technology on the biggest video platform in the universe?’

As from today, the answer to that question is, ‘yes, our friends, yes you will’.

After a long and arduous process of technical compliance, massaging code and tweaking the user experience – our good friends at YouTube have finally approved the wireWAX player for placement by those YouTube Partners who have the ability to customise their YouTube Brand Channel pages (subject to secondary individual video approval).

Does this mean you’ll see wireWAX on YouTube? In a word, yes.

YouTube has a very strict policy for the placement of 3rd-party content on brand channels and certainly won’t allow any half-baked tech on their consistently polished platform. So when, with the help of some of our acclaimed clients (themselves global power brands), who helped raise the profile of wireWAX amongst those who matter at YouTube – everything changed.

We were privileged to start conversations with some of most unexpectedly helpful folk at YouTube – whose first reaction was, ‘…this is a very cool,  slick experience!’ – so wireWAX was off to a good start.

We’ve all heard the statistics a million times; over 4 billion hours of video watched each month, 72 hours of video uploaded every minute, 500 years of YouTube video watched every day on Facebook, over 700 YouTube videos shared on Twitter each minute, etc., etc., all extremely impressive and probably already out of date. There’s no denying that YouTube is the first place for viewers looking to be entertained, informed or educated by video so there’s always been a desire to mix the magical interactivity of wireWAX with the undeniably massive audiences at youtube.com.

The YouTube Partner Program was launched in 2007 and has allowed over a million partners from all over the world to create a branded channel page. Earlier this year YouTube went one-step further and helped partners create their own custom channel page. Brands who advertise can now customise their presence on YouTube, including adding interactive widgets and 3rd-party content. For example; Nike Football, Pepsi and Gillette have all embraced the opportunity to do something different within their custom channel.

Sharing wireWAX videos on Facebook has been available since early 2011 and accounts for 2% of all wireWAX viewings; and along with 3rd-party player integration with platforms such as Brightcove and Viddler, the wireWAX wrapper for YouTube has been part of our arsenal for some time now. The wrapper allows users to exploit the powerful distribution platform with the unique functionality of wireWAX on their own websites, blogs, social media, etc.. Being able to place the combination of these two powerful technologies back on to the YouTube website has always been the ultimate goal.

You’ll notice a few subtle changes to this new integration and a much more seamless experience. Brands who advertise with YouTube and who fullfil their minimum spend requirements can now take their powerful interactive wireWAX’d video and distribute through youtube.com to their hungry audiences.

It’s a massive leap forward for wireWAX and further evidence that yet another global power brand believes in wireWAX and are confident we’re doing things right.

If you’re already a YouTube Partner with your own channel page, you currently advertise with YouTube and would like to put your wireWAX video on youtube.com – just let us know!

22nd August Update: YouTube have asked us to make it clear that all wireWAX video content will, for obvious reasons, still require a secondary approval by the YouTube team before a video goes live and that customising a YouTube Brand Channel page is currently only available to those who have advertised with YouTube.

Since the dawn of time there have been a handful of significant moments where man has said to woman, ‘by ‘eck, love… this is mega’. You may not have realised it when you woke this morning, but you are part of a generation who can be proud for the rest of human existence to say, yes, we witnessed a point in time on a par with; the parting of the Red Sea, the Declaration of Independence, the fall of the Berlin Wall and when Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards represented Great Britain in the 1988 Winter Olympics.

Parting the Red Sea

The Signing of the Declaration of Independence

The fall of the Berlin Wall

Man's proudest moment

Yes, you are witness to the start of the biggest shake-up of the human race since Tutankhamun switched to crunchy peanut butter over smooth. Today sees the relaunch of wireWAX, the world’s first taggable video tool and the beginning of a global revolt against boring, dumb and non-interactive videos of cats and stuff.

Today we make a pledge; ‘To all video everywhere, on every website, on every mobile, on every tellybox – watch your back, wireWAX will take you and eat your face and make you betterer’.

Right now you can put your video through the wireWAX magic machine and turn your band’s promo into a powerful electronic press kit, your movie into a brain-mashing epic or Auntie Pam face-planting the paddling pool into a data-rich wonderpiece.

We’ve had some of the world’s megaminds and some small animals working round-the-clock for the last year to bring you the most important piece of technology to have ever entered your life. There is no reason why every video on the planet shouldn’t be wireWAXed and we’ve made it a gazillion times easier for that to happen. Now you can drop in your video file – or even paste a YouTube URL – into the hungry mouth of the wireWAX beast. Your video will be analysed, faces found and automatically tracked. OK, yes, we know, it sounds like a giant pile of horse effluence, but no, it’s totally for real. Then you just name those faces or bin them – it’s up to you. You can even quickly add more tags to other people and objects in an instant. No need to wait, it all happens on the wireWAX supercomputer so you don’t have to get involved – it’ll tell you when it’s done.

But this is just the beginning. We’ve made wireWAX into a platform for interactive video and we built a whole trough of new stuff, including apps that you can plonk on your tags – instantly link products to Amazon, people to Facebook, show off your flickr or Instagram photos or play YouTube or Vimeo videos right there in the video! Crazyballs!

You can still make your own pop-ups and we’ve made that tool 14.5 times easier and more intuitive. It also has a big vat of new features to make it even more like an injection of fun soup in the eyeballs.

wireWAX now supports high definition videos up to 1080p! So you better tell Uncle Paul his new dentures better be super clean ‘cuz he is gonna be pixel-sharp dude. You better tell him his new purple sweater is gonna be plastered all over facebook, Google+ and Twitter too as wireWAX now has instant sharing, just roll-over the facebook logo on any video.

Want to know where all the tags of Tony’s new pony are? Don’t panic, just roll-over the timeline at the bottom of the video and voilà! Any tag throughout the video is just one click away! Nuts! Pony nuts!

Look, we could go on but we’re worried the office walls won’t take the excitement volcano that’s just erupted. Just get yourself down to wireWAX town and get involved, fast.

Canada’s biggest online fashion retailer, SSENSE, have taken advantage of wireWAX technology to create the world’s first shoppable music video. The campaign launched to much fanfare, having been embedded in over 2,000 blogs and shared more than 2,000 times through social networks.

Wanna know how it was done? Let’s break down the campaign and have a look at the ingredients to build success into your next video project with wireWAX…

Music video, you say?

We always like a challenge here at wireWAX and seamlessly incorporating shoppable features into a music video needs a sensitive touch. SSENSE wanted to produce a functional tag that would not disrupt viewing but would still draw the customer’s towards styles of clothing and accessories of interest. Now you can click on your favourite artist – right there in the video – and buy their style!

Our team provided some help on initial design and integration, then SSENSE ran with it, designing their own animated ‘S’ call-to-action and product pop-up, they then added the tags themselves our new tagging tool (yet to be made public).

It couldn’t be easier – all of the content in the pop-up is managed with the wireWAX integration into Google Docs, so you can alter elements wherever you are simply by logging into your account and tweaking the spreadsheet.

You can keep your video up to date – change prices, pictures, product descriptions, and any other dynamic elements – and these changes will be automatically carried across everywhere your video is being viewed (i.e. existing embeds on blogs, social media, etc).

They have known each other for a while as a taco is now $1.99 (£1.26) from Taco Bell

Don’t hide it away!

Prior to the official launch cheeky hints were dropped through social media channels. One of the earliest teases started back in March when rap sensation Iggy Azalea posted a screenshot of the music video featuring herself and rap duo FKI.

Fashionista leak stills

Moving closer, a couple of days before launch, leading fashion blog, Fashionista were the first to cover the story. They ‘leaked’ behind-the-scenes stills from the music video to build anticipation. Shared with their 500,000+ twitter followers and shared nearly 1000 times – a promising start for the campaign.

SSENSE racked up the anticipation with a graphical countdown timer on their homepage and embedded “Add This” buttons for their fans to share through their own social media groups. SSENSE could then closely monitor and, at times, engage with their followers – sharing the excitement of their impending launch with their followers and keep this momentum building exponentially.

Liftoff, #IThinkSheReady

At 12pm EST, press releases were out and a final round of tweeting from Iggy Azalea, FKI, Diplo, SSENSE - the wireWAX server started churning out impressive numbers as twitter and google alerts swamped us with mentions.

Hashtag #ITHINKSHEREADY becomes #1 trending topic in the U.S. on Twitter.

As is the snowball nature of social media, momentum gathered and within only a few hours of launching, the video became a top trending topic in the U.S. under the hashtag #IThinkSheReady.

Another great example of an international brand adopting wireWAX technology which once again shows, as if there was every any doubt, video has evolved.

Press Reaction

Mashable wrote:

“What we find most interesting about the video is the implications it could have for the entertainment industry. It’s not difficult to imagine a time when most — if not all — major music videos were made shoppable, especially given the number of music artists who double as style icons.”

MTV Style said:

“So basically, if you’re really feelin’ Iggy rapping in her ’80s art deco hoops and neon pink blazer, you can buy her look RIGHT then and there. Nuts. The video uses *cue nasally voice* interactive hotspot technology, which users can click to take them directly to SSENSE and purchase the item. Score!”

Ryan Seacrest official:

“Music videos usually feature some awesome fashion, and it’s not uncommon to watch one and wonder, “where did she get that dress?” or more importantly, “where can I get that dress?” Now you don’t have to wonder because the first interactive shopping music video has been released.”

Gizmodo wrote:

“We understand that the recording industry is collapsing and that its future is merchandising and using musical cachet to hock wares. But seriously, can we just watch music videos without having to confront the crass consumerism of it all the entire time?”

Portable said:

“This video is what it is; it’s not very good, but it’s sort of nice to look at, and everyone’s probably going to forget about it faster than you can say, “Rihanna is releasing a new record.” It’s obviously highly aspirational, and for the economically righteous out there……….One facet of pop is fantasy and indulgence, and that’s what we love about the genre. Besides, we’re sort of totally into that red Preen dress Iggy is wearing.”

Fortune said:

“…music videos have also emerged as an attractive place for brands to push their products. Companies paid an estimated $20 million to appear in music videos in 2010, up 7% from 2009, according to marketing analytics firm PQ Media. …this marks an attempt to capitalize on the growing use of interactive video in fashion…”

wireWAX.

In the slippery ups and downs of Britain’s economy, it was reported today that internet adspend had risen to an all new high in 2011 to £4.8 billion which is a significant increase of 14.5% and the biggest since 2007.

The wireWAX team could go into every aspect of the adspend report and look at where every penny was spent, but by the time we did that, tea would have gone cold. The great news is that video advertising is still surging ahead and the speed of growth is simply incredible. It now accounts for 10% of all the online display ads on the big web and expenditure on online video content doubled year-on-year to a staggering £109m from the £54m in 2010. Video advertising has come along way since 2008, when video spend was a mere £12 million.

A big part of this is down to the huge popularity of online TV services such as ITV’s and Channel 4′s catch-up services, broadcasters are  wireWAX users with C4′s very recent campaign for ‘dramality’, Made in Chelsea. With retail and consumer-facing industries wanting to grow, they are rapidly turning to online advertising and from today’s report, make up one-quarter of UK internet display ads.

Brands use wireWAX because online video is more attractive to consumer-facing businesses and our technology offers a new marketing format to help reach out and become closer to consumers than ever before.

Retailer Oki-Ni, a very early e-commerce user, saw the fruits that clickable video could offer and they applied wireWAX to hugely successful shoppable fashion video.

The video was embedded in over 350 fashion blogs and social platforms and whether it was on a friends wall or on a leading blog it viewers could still click on products and even buy them. With a click-through-rate of 58%, this amounted to nearly $20,000 of sales in just two weeks.

We understand that a majority of todays adspend report was talking about pre-roll video advertising. Having traditional TV adverts on an online video does not have the same impact as traditional television, especially when the choice to skip the ads is becoming ever more prevalent in places such as YouTube and Hulu. Although pre-roll ads are currently dominant and sought after, it is becoming increasingly apparent that taggable video could be a realistic alternative. Rather than projecting compulsory, unwanted advertising; by flipping that choice over to the viewer and allowing them to interact, when they want to, and then being offered an unintrusive promotion relative to that object has to be a better way forward, doesn’t it?

2012 is the start of many things to come and with video evolving fast, you can bet that we’ll be there at the beginning.

wireWAX/