Universal Technical Institute - Countdown Widget

When Universal Technical Institute was looking for ways to engage their prospective, and current students with something new and innovative - LACED came up with the idea of a Branded Desktop Countdown Widget.

Leveraging the leading provider of post-secondary educations relationship with Rich Christensen of PINKS ALL OUT, we thought what better way to countdown life's events than with a real-time Arm Drop!

THE PROCESS
Making sure to take full (360°) advantage of Rich Christensen we did a video shoot on green screen to capture him in full-on reality. Working with a limited budget, but an abundance of creativity, we were able to use a "lazy-susan" and do a full 360° rotation of Rich. We wound up using the footage to create the Branded Desktop Widget that turned and literally have the user input in the month/day/year and time of their event, on the "back end" of the widget.

Once we got the footage we envisioned, we took it into Final Cut Pro and knocked out the well lite green screen. Using Adobe Photoshop we designed a perfect front, and back for the widget. After the designs were approved we used Adobe Flash, and mProjector to program the widget for it's smoothness, and timing.

TRACKING & MEASURING
Cool factor, sure, but even better a marketing tool! The Branded Desktop Countdown Widget turned out looking great, but to be able to be used as a marketing tool to meet the overall objective, even better. Not only an interesting way for users to interact with the Universal Technical Institute brand, but also a way to drive prospective students to the uti.edu web site.