The world’s first 5G powered A.I Stylist:

Helping film fans shop affordable red carpet fashion live at the EE BAFTAs.

Overview:

Research showed that red carpet fashion dominated the online conversation surrounding award galas, with 33%* of fans wanting to purchase the looks of their favourite celebrity. However, without access to a red carpet stylist, star style is out of reach for most. We leveraged a new social phenomenon, using a combination of innovative technologies to transform the world’s first virtual Supermodel @shudu.gram, into the world’s first 5G powered AI Stylist. Blurring the lines between the digital and real worlds, we gave our influencer the power to do what no human could do. She was able to cross-reference thousands of retailers, in a matter of seconds, and deliver affordable red carpet fashion to fans at home, accessible via a few simple taps on their devices.

This campaign was devised around a simple insight that fans tune in to watch award galas for red carpet fashion, with 33% wanting to obtain the look. However, with the average cost of celeb garments exceeding £12k from designer boutiques, cost and accessibility present monumental barriers between fans and their style icons. Removing these obstacles was no easy feat and relied on cohesively bringing together multiple cutting edge technologies in order to deliver a truly unique and game changing user experience - the world’s first 5G powered AI stylist.

LIVE ON THE RED CARPET:

First, we needed A-Listers to Interact with Shudu on the Red carpet.

Turning Shudu into the world’s first 5G powered AI stylist required exceptional digital craft for both the red-carpet experience and the digital ecosystem.

As an Instagram influencer, Shudu’s creator Cameron James Wilson had a 3D CGI model built, however, this would not facilitate truly life-like and real-time movement. This is something that we knew would be essential - Shudu needed to feel alive on the night, to stand any chance of drawing in A-listers. As a result, we rebuilt the her from the ground up, using the unreal4 engine responsible for the best character builds in AAA gaming titles.

Now with a model capable of incredibly lifelike human simulation, we needed a way to bring her to life in a physical presence. We turned to holo-gauze projection technology to give her a full 6 foot 2 life-size presence on the red carpet, designed to look great on the night, as well as in content. This would ensure we’d be able to capture the attention of the celebrities, but we still needed to address issues around latency and data volume in order to deliver a truly real-time two-way interactive experience for the celebrities.

Delivering this experience relied heavily on EE’s technical expertise and 5G network infrastructure. Only 5G’s low latency capabilities could ensure Shudu had reaction speeds of 15milliseconds (20x faster than a blinking eye) enabling her to interact instantaneously with celebrities in a truly lifelife manner, blurring the lines between the digital and real worlds.

Capturing exclusive content and star style to share with Shudu’s followers:

Armed with multiple cameras with remote triggers, Shudu was able to capture both a full length photo of the stars outfit for our AI experience as well as pose for a selfie with our stars, served within minutes of a star stepping on to the carpet, across social and via our webchat.

LIVE ON SOCIAL

Helping fans shop celebrity style in real-time


As fans tuned in for the live coverage at home they were served real-time updates across all of EE’s and Shudu’s social channels, providing them with a first look at celebrity style and with a simple swipe, drive traffic to our AI Stylist webchat with Shudu.

Shudu, would then help fans curate an affordable version of their favourite stars outfit, delivering her top three matches from 1000’s of high street retailers (at affordable prices). Fans could then add shoes to complete the look. Items could then be purchased instantly or saved for later allowing fans to curate more looks from a range of celebrities.

Behind the scenes our webchat was powered by Snap Tech’s machine learning capabilities. The technology combines hand-crafted rules around what you’re looking at – from “what makes a dress a dress” to “what’s the difference between shorts and skirts?” blended with results from machine learning “training data” which is where a garment’s colour, pattern density, fabric, cut, shape, style and accessories come into play. This information is then cross-referenced across thousands of affordable ecommerce retailers in an instant in order to serve back a like-for-like match.

Virtual Collaborations

But like any star we had to give her the full red-carpet treatment, collaborating with Swarovski to design a bespoke gown (BAFTA’s official jewelry partner) and revealed to their 4M followers on the night. The bespoke digital dress was made up of tens of thousands of double pointed Chaton Crystals in different shades of yellow. The linear design and the strong bold lines on the top provide structure, while the bottom of the dress is very fluid to accentuate Shudu’s movement – built to respond within the simulation to her movements. For added effect, we could simulate wind to blow her gown as she posed.

We also placed Shudu amongst the stars as they all got red-carpet ready, creating and sharing exclusive BTS content from the Savoy Hotel (the official hotel partner) in the build-up.

Nadja Swarovski, Member of the Swarovski Executive Board, commented: “Swarovski is committed to supporting fashion innovation and creativity, and we were delighted to translate our crystal into holographic form for Shudu to wear on the 2019 BAFTA red carpet. We look forward to seeing her in her glittering gown, along with her stunning Atelier Swarovski jewelry pieces.”

Results:

EE’s brief for this experience had multiple facets and objectives. The campaign had to deliver awareness of the partnership and share of voice across PR and social media, whilst demonstrating the power of EE’s network to bring film fans closer to the red carpet. This year we had the unique opportunity to leverage and hero EE’s new 5G offering, providing; low latency, enhanced data volume handling capabilities; and super-fast speed.

The result: The world’s first 5G powered A.I Stylist. A campaign that used the latest in technology to provide an experience that challenged existing barriers and perceptions. It not only enhanced EE’s relevance among film fans across the UK, but also drew in and engaged the stars themselves.

Captivated by our red carpet experience, stars such as Salma Hayek, Andy Serkis and Regina King engaged with Shudu. This inspired a whopping 113k engagements with our AI Stylist chat, delivering over 2k personalised red carpet looks to fans at home. Whilst not a key objective of the campaign, these curated looks generated value in excess of £400k to retailers proving that this campaign met a need to fans at home. 


The spectacular nature of both, the red carpet experience and the intelligent AI Stylist chat, ensured a dominant presence on the night with a huge 27% of all mentions of BAFTA (on the night) also referencing EE. Amongst other sponsors of the event, this translated to a share of voice of over 93%.

Above all, demonstrating the capabilities of UK’s best network and reinforcing EE’s commitment to being the most culturally relevant and advanced digital communications company, with the consumer at the heart.