S4C’s most ambitious interactive project to date

The challenge: The internet offers massive potential for engaging with your audience, but what if your viewers aren’t used to technology? S4C were showing a TV programme ‘Y’Porthmon’, a recreation of a 1930s sheep drover’s journey from Machynlleth to Brecon. Our challenge was to help generate interest in the programme by engaging their prospective viewers online.

What we did: We worked with S4C and producers Telesgop to create an online presence for the programme, coming up with a number of ideas that would provide viewers with a context for the drover’s journey and bring the show to life.  By working alongside their production department, we were able to integrate our ideas into the programme’s broader marketing strategy, which included live events, educational resources and community groups.

The result: The chosen concept focused on an interactive 3-D map which incorporated the natural history of the viewers’ locations and enabled them to ‘drop’ stories, creating a tapestry of content easily accessible to users of all abilities. Built on a custom .NET content management system, the 3-D blog propagated content from across the site adding a geo-tag to it. This created a new level of meta-data, allowing users to get a feel for the history and identity of each area the drover passed through.