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CELEBRATING JOHN LEWIS 150TH BIRTHDAY
John Lewis called on SIS LIVE’s live event streaming expertise to help unite its 40,000
staff across the country for a nationwide party to celebrate its 150th birthday.
The department store has come a
long way since John Lewis opened
a drapery shop on Oxford Street
in London in 1864. It now has 40
stores, from Aberdeen to Exeter,
and the group wanted staff at
all of them to share the birthday
celebrations.
Store bosses insisted the John
Lewis partnership ethos which
gives all permanent staff a stake
in the company, was reflected
by including all of them in the
150th birthday party. Shipping
40,000 people to one venue was
impractical and would lose a
sense of intimacy, so SIS LIVE was
brought in to help give everyone a
sense of close involvement in the
events.
It was decided that colleagues
from every store including John
Lewis headquarters would be
represented at three venues across
the country for the celebration,
which included performances from
Paloma Faith, Gaz Coombes and
Fyfe Dangerfield, and contributions
from many of the a staff who have
helped make the store successful.
SIS LIVE worked with event
managers, the mcm creative
group, to ensure the main party
at Birmingham’s LG Arena, which
had live injects from the Edinburgh
International Conference Centre
and Wembley Stadium, was linked
to those venues and to the John
Lewis department stores by secure
live communications.
“We were in safe
hands with SIS.”
John Lewis and mcm brought in
SIS LIVE because of its experience
and skill in live event streaming,
webcasts and corporate
communications, delivered over
secure online links. SIS LIVE’s
solution was to host and stream
live coverage of the birthday
celebrations into stores and mobile
devices.
Those who couldn’t attend the
main venues would watch events
streamed live by SIS LIVE onto
screens erected in each of the 40
staff canteens, or at home via a
secure link to a SIS LIVE-hosted
website.
Martin Evans, SIS LIVE IP Sales
Manager, said: “We realised
the best way to ensure all the
staff watching remotely had a
secure, reliable and good quality
connection was to build and host
a secure website ourselves, and
manage who had access to it.
“We achieved this using our own
streaming and encoding farm,
developed in-house, which can
allow people all over the world
to watch live streaming events
as they happen. But unlike other
platforms, we have complete
control over who can see the
content.
“In the case of John Lewis,
delivering optimum standard live
pictures to screens erected in every
store’s canteen was potentially the
biggest problem, because every
location had different bandwidth
requirements. It could also be
problematic to deliver live pictures
transversing the company intranet
firewall.”
Several weeks’ planning was
followed by continuous testing to
every John Lewis branch, carried
out in conjunction with the store’s
IT manager, and with individual
website and mobile device users.
Staff who intended watching
via their PCs, laptops and other
mobile devices were given details
of how to access the restricted
website, named and registered for
the one-off event, and delivered
with John Lewis branding.
“It really was a party
to remember, with a
fantastic atmosphere
and a real sense of
inclusivity.”
John Lewis pulled out all the
stops to ensure the party, held in
September 2014, was an evening
to remember. TV presenter Davina
McCall anchored the celebrations
in Birmingham, fellow TV presenter
Carol Smillie hosted the party in
Edinburgh and actor Christopher
Biggins took charge at Wembley.
Staff members from branches
across the country and the John
Lewis HQ represented every part
of the business in the party’s
opening parade at Birmingham’s
LG Arena (part of the National
Exhibition Centre since renamed
the Genting Arena) in front of 7,000
staff in the audience.
Colleagues watching from
Edinburgh, Wembley, and stores
and homes all over the country
cheered as, encouraged by
McCall, staff members reminisced,
and dedicated service and
charity fundraising efforts were
recognised.
Contributions came thick and
fast from colleagues gathered at
Edinburgh and Wembley, who
were linked live via SIS LIVE
satellite trucks at those venues,
and SIS LIVE’s dual antennae truck
at the LG Arena.
Output from all three venues was
uplinked and downlinked at SIS
LIVE’s Milton Keynes Network
Operations Centre, which acted as
an operations hub, before being
beamed live onto screens at the
main venues at each of the 40
John Lewis stores, as well as via
the internet into homes.
“Everything went
according to
plan, thanks in no
small part to the
professionalism and
expertise of the SIS
LIVE team.”
Paloma Faith, Gaz Coombes and
Fyfe Dangerfield performed their
songs from John Lewis TV ads at
the LG Arena, and a musical-style
history of John Lewis also formed
part of the entertainment.
Neil Crispin, CEO of mcm creative
said: “It really was a party to
remember, with a fantastic
atmosphere and a real sense of
inclusivity, which is what we set
out to achieve.
“When a live event is on such
an ambitious scale linking
numerous venues, it’s vital that the
connections are robust – and we
were in safe hands with SIS.
“Everything went according to
plan, thanks in no small part to the
professionalism and expertise of
the SIS LIVE team.”