https://amoreofficial.com/serenading-britain

Amore’s A&R manager, Conrad Withey came up with a grand plan to promote the group in the build-up to the Queen’s Jubilee. The plan was for Amore to serenade people every day for a month leading up to the big event.

The ambitious plan required an online system to capture requests, confirm them and add content after the serenades were completed.

I built a very detailed system to display the request forms and content as well as a CMS to manage the process.

Each date needed three states depending on the date and whether content was available.
Forthcoming & Available- The date hasn’t passed and is still available so users can fill in the request form.
Forthcoming & Booked – The date hasn’t passed but an event has been confirmed so users can’t make any new requests for this date. The app displays the name of the town where the serenade has been booked.
Past Event With Content – if we have uploaded a video and photos then the date will launch a lightbox to display the content.
Past Event – The date has passed but content hasn’t been added yet. A message saying check back soon is displayed.

When a user requests a serenade an ajax request runs a php script to store the details in a MySQL database as well as emailing all the details to Amore’s management for approval.

The back-end system was even more complicated. I built a full CMS that allowed administrators to approve or hide requests in addition to adding content for past serenades.

They could easily confirm booked dates, making them unavailable for requests in the widget. Past serenades have settings to add event details, an embedded YouTube video and a few photographs before publishing the content in the live version of the app.

The CMS includes a some jQuery magic to make updates very clean and seamless. Removing an event from the CMS will cause it to fade out while it is marked as hidden in the MySQL database. Event details can be updated without leaving the page and photographs can also be deleted by simply clicking the delete button and watching them fade away.

I was away at the start of the campaign so the CMS was vital for Alex Burford to update the content, and it worked like a charm.

The campaign to serenade someone every day was a very ambitious idea and a huge logistical challenge. Caroline Wellock and Alex Burford did an incredible job organising all the events while my system handled all the requests before making the content available for fans to keep up with the events around the country.