Owned by Boots, No7 Beauty Company is a U.K. skincare brand with products sold in more than 22,000 stores across 29 markets worldwide. Its annual product launch tends to be one of the most anticipated events on the calendar for media, retail partners, influencers, and industry insiders. U.K.-based integrator Insight Presentation Systems turned to Visionary systems to bring this year's so to immersive life.
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While the event has evolved year after year, the latest edition featured a new approach to design and production. Shifting to an end-on performance configuration, the stage included expansive wall-to-wall projections and a thrust stage extending into the audience to create a fully immersive environment that elevated the brand experience.
Insight Presentation Systems was selected to design, execute and manage the production. “We’ve been producing events for Boots for over seven years,” said Mathew Cook, technical director for Insight Presentation Systems. “No7 Beauty Company’s annual launch has become a highlight of our calendar, and every year the scope expands. This year’s configuration was the most ambitious yet.”
Traditionally, these events relied heavily on standard SDI-based systems for video delivery. Insight Presentation Systems has worked with Visionary’s 5 Series, but only on a limited scale. “In the past, we’ve worked with Visionary, but it’s traditionally been a couple of screens here and there,” explained Cook. “Our prior events with No7 Beauty Company relied on SDI and HDMI, but as video-over-IP continues to gain traction, we decided to leverage Visionary’s 5 Series for the event.”
With eight screens surrounding the stage and a need to deliver higher resolutions than SDI could easily accommodate, the production team determined that Visionary’s 5 Series offered an optimal solution. “Almost overnight, we shifted nearly the entire video system to Visionary,” said Cook. “This became the largest live event project we’ve ever done with Visionary by a significant margin.”
The transition was made possible by a large installation project already in progress, which left a significant number of Visionary’s 5 Series units in Insight’s warehouse. “When Jacques [Batchelor] came by on the Sunday before the rig and asked to borrow some, I agreed without realizing it would be so many,” recalled Cook. “It turned out to be 20 endpoints, all ready to go, which saved us from having to source additional units.”
Scaling Visionary to this magnitude for a live event carried some risk, particularly when it came to latency, which is a critical factor in live production. “It was, in some ways, a baptism of fire,” said Batchelor. “We decided to just go for it and see how it performed. Fortunately, our prior experience gave us confidence that it would do what we needed.”
Visionary’s low-latency performance and the 5 Series Decoders’ network loop-through feature proved invaluable. “The network loop-through meant we didn’t have to run multiple network cables to the truss for projector control,” noted Batchelor. “That made the install smoother and saved us time on-site.”
The system integrated seamlessly into the existing network infrastructure, supported by strategically placed NETGEAR switches. “Since we already had a robust network in place, adding Visionary wasn’t a major change to our overall system design,” Batchelor explained. “Unlike other video products, Visionary fits into our existing network architecture without requiring major reconfigurations.”
During the event, a couple of technical challenges arose. Visionary’s technical support team responded quickly. “We had senior-level technical support within hours,” said Cook. “Chuck Larson (director of training and support for Visionary) joined a call despite the time difference. While his involvement was focused on fixing our immediate issue, he genuinely wanted to understand our real-world use case to help shape future product development. The speed and level of response were impressive, especially given that we’re a relatively small operation.
“Visionary’s 5 Series delivered the performance, flexibility, and low-latency operation this high-profile launch required," he concluded. "The 5 Series integrates seamlessly with our existing infrastructure, offers features that make installation easier and comes with outstanding technical support. For us, the 5 Series is now part of our toolkit for the future.