BBC unites mobile and social audience engagement via one platform with IMImobile
The BBC has united all social and mobile audience cross-channel engagement into a single platform created by IMImobile, which won the contract this summer.
The broadcaster has chosen the agency’s DaVinci Social platform to help it streamline audience engagement through all devices across its radio and TV channels as well as its live events.
The tool has been designed to help BBC production teams centralise and manage inbound and outbound audience interactions across SMS, MMS, email, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, almost in real time.
Given the scale of the BBC’s citizen journalism, the platform will help producers listen to any inbound stream of content across channels, with the choice of either replying to individuals or en mass. They can also take content out of the console and republish it to other channels across its TV, website or mobile app portfolio.
Steve Godman, commercial director of IMImobile told The Drum the platform effectively caterd for the amount of citizen journalism content uploading.
“The tool has been designed to sit inside an organisation where content comes in fast and needs to be placed somewhere. The platform will be used to allow for that content, whether it be images or videos, to come in, be viewed, curated and collated, verified and republished, after it has been reformatted for multiple devices.”
DaVinci Social has also been designed to help broadcasters such as the BBC to better understand and contextualise inbound content, providing analytics that help shape who the individuals were and whether they were regular contributors.
“Journalists will also use it to push in content from the field, although most of it is about audiences communicating with the BBC, usually following a call to action. For example – ‘text or tweet us the maddest thing you did over the weekend’. The amount of interaction that occurs at that point is quite dramatic – there is a lot of content being generated.
“Audience engagement is paramount for the BBC and inclusion is everything, so they need to be able to offer this kind of communication on any platform they want,” added Godman.
IMImobile has worked with the BBC for the last ten years, initially providing an SMS engagement proposition, which was radically developed to keep pace with changes in technology and audience expectations. However, DaVinci has been built from scratch, and can also be adapted for commercial broadcaster propositions.
Claire McLaughlin, head of Interactive at the BBC's Technical Advice and Contracts Unit, said: “Throughout the bid, IMImobile was able to successfully demonstrate that the DaVinci Social platform meets our high demands and criteria for centralising all audience interactions across our radio, TV and live event programming.
"The platform enables the BBC to respond to the change in audience behaviour and integrate mobile and social audience interactions into the broadcasting experience.”
Hundreds of BBC producers will be able to use the tool concurrently across progammes.