nimbb

Doctors Without Borders - South Africa

Doctors Without Borders, an independent international humanitarian organization, needed to integrate video recording into a website for its Kiss Malaria Goodbye campaign. Visitors would show their support for the cause of fighting Malaria in Africa by recording a real-time video clip of them giving a kiss. FGX Studios, the company in charge of web development, used the Nimbb technology to quickly add webcam video recording into the website and control the project's costs.

Situation

FGX Studios was approached by Molasses Media to develop an online campaign for Doctors Without Borders (South Africa) for the Kiss Malaria Goodbye campaign. The main purpose of the campaign was to spread awareness about Malaria in Africa and foster a spirit of hope and positivity around proactive management of the disease. In growing a captured database for the cause, communication and education can be disseminated about the 15 minute diagnostic tests and various treatments available. As a technical project, the objectives were to reach people on their respective technology platforms and touchpoints, encouraging them to interact and capturing them in a database.

Problem

The campaign had the following elements: Mobisite, SMS Platform, Microsite, Newsletter Sign-up, Image / Video Upload, PlayBack Gallery, Activation Emailer, Facebook Application, Social Sharing Plug-ins. Additionally, there was the requirement that users with a Web Camera active on their device should be able to record a short clip "blowing a kiss" as a token to show support for the cause. The problem with South Africa is that the Internet connection for the average person is extemely slow in comparison to speeds in European countries and America. The cost of bandwidth is also very expensive in comparison and so the search began for 3rd party technology / API that allowed integration without any lag, delay or heavy data transfer happening in the user interface.

"The campaign development time was minimal and so we needed to be sure we were purchasing 3rd party licensing that would be reliable, fast, easy to order and easy to implement," says Mirisa Du Toit, Social Media & Campaign Division Manager at FGX Studios. "Enquiries into other applications did not enjoy such efficient response time and packages were also complexly structured or required lengthy licensing commitment, which was not compatible with campaigns as marketing bursts that are only active for a few months at most."

Solution

In April 2011, managers at FGX Studios subscribed to the Nimbb service, which provides a comprehensive set of features to add webcam video recording to websites. "Nimbb quickly stood out in developer blogs and discussion forums as a favourite for real-time in browser web cam support and presented an API that was simple to implement and with good supporting documentation and email support," says Mirisa. "Nimbb allowed us to satisfy the requirements of the brief of including an inbrowser web cam recorder, as well as allow for easy playback within the gallery. Videos are also hosted internationally and not on our local domain, thus saving on unnecessary and very costly local bandwidth charges on our servers."

Nimbb combines an easy-to-use programmable video recorder/player and a flexible pricing model. Using simple HTML and JavaScript codes, the programmers at FGX Studios were able to quickly embed the Nimbb Player into their project. Thanks to the Nimbb recurring subscription model that doesn't require any contract, the project could be extended on a monthly basis without occuring any excessive costs.

Benefits

By using the Nimbb technology into the Kiss Malaria Goodbye site, visitors were able to easily submit webcam recordings and generate video content. "The campaign submissions proved to be very interesting," says Mirisa. "The web cam submissions using Nimbb technology accounted for 70% of all submissions, which was a curious statistics considering the South African Internet & bandwidth landscape. The captured videos provide quality content to be reworked for re-use in further campaign elements and communications."

About


Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation committed to two objectives: providing medical assistance to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion, natural and man-made disasters; and speaking out about the plight of the populations assisted. MSF offers assistance to people based only on need and irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation.	FGX Studios (Finegrafix) was founded in 2001 and specialises in website design, website development and overall online product solutions and interface creation. With world-wide recognised products such as CMS Ignition (Content Management Modular Solution by FGX) and Mallguide (Retail Resource Portal of South Africa), FGX Studios have grounded themselves as experts in the field with clients across various industries, particularly within the retail and shopping centre industry. FGX Engage is the division within FGX Studios that specialises in social media and integrated digital campaigns.	Molasses Media is an integrated digital communications consulting company who approached FGX Studios to do the online development for the Kiss Malaria Goodbye Campaign.