AMD
Micro-Site Promotes AMD’s Role in Making of “Over The Hedge”
The Challenge
“Over the Hedge,” premiered on April 30, 2006. Just before opening day, an AMD micro-site (http://overthehedge.amd.com) also made its debut. The timing was no coincidence. The computer chip maker wanted the world to know that workstations using powerful AMD chips were used during the production process. So they launched a micro-site to explain the technology behind the creative genius. First, though, the micro-site had to be engineered and designed, and that required solving a few technical challenges.
For starters, AMD wanted the site to be distributed to 10 different countries and eight different languages, including English, Russian, Thai, Spanish and Italian. Essentially a single architecture and software engine was needed to support 10 different versions of the same site. Human translators would also need to log into the site to perform language translations before the site went live.
Another technical challenge: The micro-site would have to be available in both high-bandwidth versions (to support Flash animation) and low-bandwidth (to accommodate users in countries with low broadband availability). And then there was the issue of scalability. “We had no idea how many visitors would come to the site in each country,” says Mike Saenz, solutions delivery manager at Live Oak 360.
The Solution
FG SQUARED, an interactive marketing agency in Austin, Texas, did the creative design and Flash animation for the site but chose Live Oak 360 to build the software engine that would power the micro-site.
“We built one engine and one site that looked like and functioned as multiple sites,” explains Saenz. “A key way we accomplished this is by using Unicode. Unlike the English-oriented ASCI format, this code can accommodate content in any language, even Klingon.” Saenz adds that the site’s architecture was built to scale, with lightweight, modular code and a clean database design.
Multi-lingual content management was another priority. “We created a staging area where translators in the different countries could log in, perform the translations and then hit the ‘promote’ button to publish,” says Saenz.
Live Oak also designed the engine to pull content from the database in formats that could be displayed on both high-bandwidth Flash sites and low-bandwidth HTML versions.
To ensure maximum publicity for the micro-site, Live Oak designed the site to be “URL friendly,” meaning that the content format could be easily scanned by search engines such as Google.
Metrics reporting was another key feature. “AMD wanted metrics on everything. We produced a home-grown tracking system that reports total visitors, hits, page views, etc – all sorted by language and country.” To ensure that all the metrics queries don’t constantly burden the database, Saenz says Live Oak built a separate system to track each click.
The Benefits
The AMD-“Over the Hedge” micro-site is still up and running several months after the movie’s premiere. Saenz reports that site usage exceeded expectations, logging over 554,000 total visitors and 1.5 million page views by early 2007.
Administration has been a breeze. “They’ve had very few usability or publishing issues, nor have they had problems logging into reports,” Saenz says. “And the site has never gone down.”
All in all, “Over the Hedge” has been an over-the-top success for AMD. “At the launch party, AMD was jumping for joy that the site got launched in time for the premiere, and they’re pleased that the site has been running beautifully ever since.”
