61st Doe Show with a Difference 2021
During "Lockdown 2" a call from the largest privately owned Agricultural dealer in the UK and probably Europe is just what you need. In November 2020 the marketing team at Ernest Doe & Son Ltd made contact with us as they were exploring the possibility of creating a virtual "Doe Show" which is their annual sales window to the trade held at its grounds by their head office at Ulting, Essex.
In addition to the excitement this brings there was concern too of how we would be able to fulfil their expectations. Our first task was to create a small working demo version which the marketing team could use to get their concept across to senior management. We knew from the start we could not create this 3D interactive tour the usual way as we would for our usual customer base who are generally based indoors.
The concept behind the 3D tour was to make the show feel as "normal" as possible which the Matterport platform was ideal for as this would allow visitors to wander around the show looking at the various pieces of hardware before placing a bid via an auction platform run by Cheffins. We understand the total sales value of goods was in excess of £1.25 million and attracted visitors from across the UK and Europe as detailed in the Cheffins website article here..
The scanning and data capture process was not going to be that straight forward with one of our biggest problems being the weather bearing in mind this would take place in mid January, with the possibility of snow, rain which would stop filming plus low winter sun creating shadows and only a small 8 hour daylight window each day. The area to cover was around 135,000 sq ft. so we needed a minimum of 4 days. A big ask of the Ernest Doe team as it meant their equipment staff could not work in the area we needed to carry out the scanning. As expected we did not escape the weather which did impact the scan but not that adversely.
Once the scan data had been processed on the Matterport cloud which was done on a daily basis so we could check our work ongoing which meant the final post production processing could be completed in a timely manner to meet the Ernest Doe's tight deadlines.
We decided early on in the process that the Matterport software alone would not give Ernest Doe everything they needed, so we decided to introduce Treedis a Matterport add-on solution in to the mix. This would address the three areas where Ernest Doe needed more detail and control over. All the products in the auction needed to be "Tagged", this helps with making the tour more interactive. The need for statistical information was a prerequisite, plus there was interest in in-tour video meetings.
The "Tags" were created in Matterport and then enhanced in Treedis, by adding iframes to allow access to the content on the shows micro-site and the Cheffins auction site so customers could place bids. Once an item was sold the Ernest Doe staff could turn the Tag red and remove the link, one of the reasons we chose Treedis as it allows hierarchical access so this could be allocated to Ernest Doe staff without putting all the other data at risk.
As mentioned it was important to collect statistical data as it is with all digital solutions to measure the success (or not) for a number of reasons, cost, impact of the event or offer to the business and Treedis gave us much more detail on the the performance of the 3D model than Matterport. One item that stood out from the tour was the engagement time of viewers of over 12 minutes on some days and averaged around 6 minutes for the two weeks.
There was one other reason in addition to tags, statistics and user interface we choose Treedis for this project and that was to provide Ernest Doe sales team the ability if required to be able to virtually meet the customers inside the 3D tour and guide them around to discuss the items in real time. At the end of the day this feature wasn't deployed however had no cost impact on the project.
If you would like to know more, we would be more than happy to talk or arrange a demo, so you can see the benefits of having a 3D interactive tour and we can answer any questions you may have.
Please get in touch via out contact form.
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