ABOUT

The brief:
Help EE to bring the community together at Christmas – while showcasing the brand’s full breadth of tech wizardry.

Poke’s answer:
Let it snow? We helped people make it snow with their very own snow blizzard.

Nitty gritty

As lead sponsor of Make Hackney Sparkle – a programme of free Christmas entertainment in the borough – EE wanted to create something that surprised and delighted residents and passers-by alike.

Our solution was to forgo the traditional seasonal decorations and instead focus on answering the question that Londoners ask each Christmas: “Will it snow?”

Intriguing posters encouraged people to make a call or check in using Foursquare. Those curious enough were rewarded with a lovely blast of ‘Let it Snow’ by Dean Martin, followed by a big surprise… their very own snow blizzard.

To make it all happen we first had to build some electronics to trigger our snow cannons. Then we had to create our own application so that we could control the amount, size and rate of the snow, plus the frequency with which visitors could interact with it.

Creating Christmas magic is never easy (just ask Santa) but we got their using a hefty combination of Django, Twilio API, Foursquare API, Arduino, an EE 4G connection and five snow cannons situated on the roofs of Rivington street buildings.

Highlights

Getting our techy hands dirty creating some nifty bespoke software and electronics.
Bringing EE’s positioning as the network “for your digital life” to life.
Seeing people think that it was actually snowing for real and tweeting about it.
The reactions: hipsters smiled, average dates became magical and Christmas wishes came true. All thanks to a local rate phone call.