Overview

Powerchannel was an initiative of Granada Media which was designed to bring the internet into peoples homes via their TV and the set top Powerchannel box, relegating the need of a personal computer. This product was to be marketed and sold through Boxclever and Radio Rental stores.

We were asked to provide a campagin to help educate the staff of these stores about the use and benefits of the internet as they were deemed to be ‘Internet Virgins’. We believed that the best way to educate the staff was to get them learning by using the technology, so we recommended and developed a training website which was viewable through the Powerchannel box. In creating this site we had to deal with the issues such as; a new technology, the hardware component continually being updated, and function design specifications which changed with each new hardware release.

The site itself involved a learning zone with information about each specific topic and was followed by a short 10 question multichoice quiz to test their knowledge. In addition to this the site included a link to their own email accounts, a jargon busters area, feedback loop and links to other Powerchannel sites. In order to motivate the staff to complete their training the website was financially incentivised, where each staff member went in the draw to win £££ for just logging on each day, completing training chapters or providing feedback.

We built a comprehensive back end administration and tracking system which the regional store managers could access to monitor the training of the staff in their areas. This was displayed graphically for easy interpretation. During the initial closed user-group testing it was found that the staff training uptake was in the region of 80% - by far the best result any of the Granada training methods to date.

My Involvement

My involvement with this Powerchannel campaign was as the project manager liasing with the client contact from the start to end, monitoring the projects design, functionality and site generation.

In addition to this I copywrote the 8 Learning Zone chapters and quiz questions and consulted on how the web TV site should be incentivised. I was also involved in the co-ordination of the print material produced making sure that the messaging and details were consistent across all mediums.