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Digital signage brings real-time opinion polling to UK election

Sky News brought real-time (and surprisingly accurate) opinion polling to the people in last week's U.K. elections — with an assist from social media and digital signage technology.

May 15, 2015 by Christopher Hall — w, t

Sky News brought real-time opinion polling to the people in last week's U.K. elections — with an assist from social media and digital signage technology.

Out-of-home media agency Rapport worked alongside the Sky television network and creative technology firm Grand Visual to measure social activity on Twitter with up-to-the-minute information being displayed across national digital signage 6 sheets, including mall and rail locations, according to a post on the Grand Visual blog. (And at least judging by some of the the pictures posted around the Internet, the campaign provided a more accurate picture of the election's eventual turnout than most sources.)

"Sky News coverage of the General Election is about being up-to-the-minute, relevant and accessible across multiple platforms," Sky Media Planning Controller Alasdair Weddell said. "This dynamic digital outdoor solution enables us to be first for breaking election updates even when our consumers are out and about."

The digital out-of-home campaign went live on May 6, with an aim of demonstrating how Sky News was at the heart of the nation's election conversation — one expected by most pundits to be neck and neck that instead wasn't close. According to Grand Visual, system was built to pull in data from social media analytics company Vigiglobe, a partner that Sky has collaborated with for the Sky News app, to measure the latest stats of the election build up.

"This campaign for Sky News demonstrates the power of digital out-of-home for brands in a rich and relevant way through smart use of data," Grand Visual Managing Director Neil Morris said. "OpenLoop (Grand Visual's DOOH campaign management dashboard) and enhanced digital out-of-home communication really comes into its own at a time like this when the public have a real hunger for insight and a trusted source."

OpenLoop was used to manage live data reflecting the performance of the five main political parties on Twitter. On screen, the dynamic creative adapted every hour according to social media sentiment to keep the public informed as the election progressed. Vigiglobe analyzed all relevant tweets based on which party had the most positive tweets and which party was tweeted about the most over the previous hour and fed that data via API into OpenLoop.

The campaign also drew the attention of the twitterati:

Live tweet data. Thanks to @Vigiglobe @GrandVisual @Rapportww @JCDecaux_UK #GE2015 #Design #DOOH be informed pic.twitter.com/CfjvJnrLdq

— Sky News Design (@NewsDesigners) May 6, 2015

And apparently it's missed now that it's gone:

Already missing the realtime smartcontent on #GE2015 provided yest by @skynews @grandvisual @jcdecaux and @vigiglobe pic.twitter.com/5Y81OZlI4n

— Laurent Dehasse (@ldehasse) May 7, 2015

"It's yet another exemplary campaign from Sky who are harnessing the power of digital out-of-home," said Craig Barber, head of innovation and emerging media at Rapport. "Sky News is able to visually represent the election conversations taking place across the U.K., showcasing how Sky News is at the heart of election campaigning. Digital out-of-home is one of the few mediums that is able to support this up-to-the-minute data on a national scale."

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