The Opportunity
To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission, the greatest technological feat of the 20th century, the JFK Presidential Library wanted to introduce today’s generation to President Kennedy’s bold vision for the space program reflected in his famous “Moonshot” speech which would go on to become one of the most quoted speeches of all time, and JFK’s “Moonshot” would become synonymous with the idea of challenging the impossible.
The Experience
The JFK Presidential Library created a mobile AR experience reflective of all things Apollo 11 culminating in a simulated launch through the app and a re-creation at the library: JFK Moonshot. JFK Moonshot was a fully-synchronized augmented reality recreation of Apollo 11 where every moment, maneuver, and milestone unfolded in real time, second-by-second, precisely 50 years later.
To share, inform and connect with viewers around the world, JFK Presidential Library planned a livestream of the AR launch extended to Twitch, Facebook and YouTube. The experience would feature a collaboration with leading influencers and newscasters, interviews with historical NASA figures and live countdown to the actual rocket launch 50 years to the minute of Apollo 11’s 9:32am EST launch.
Bulldog DM Partnership
Bulldog DM was selected to provide: plan, manage, produce and enable the livestream.
- Site assessment – review of the outdoor waterfront location to determine the feasibility of a live broadcast relative to the physical AR location markers on site
- Redundant broadcast transmission strategy that eliminated any single point of failure
- Robust and redundant live encoding workflow
- Pre-stream account testing on Twitch, Facebook and YouTube
- An award-winning live video production team including two AR camera feeds of the live AR rocket launch seamlessly integrated into one video broadcast workflow
The Result
This engagement marked the very first livestream of an AR experience and drove:
- 110,000+ rocket launches around the world
- 140,000+ downloads of the app
- 8x more social mentions than competitive museums
- 240,000,000+ global brand impressions
- An 11% increase related to JFK inspiring innovation
- 8 Shorty Award wins
- Silver Ciclope Award
- 3 Epica Awards: Gold, silver and bronze
- 24 One Show shortlist nominations