The Tech Behind The Met

Golden Tech For A Gilded Evening

After two years of uncertainty caused by the pandemic, the Met Gala returned in full swing on May 2, 2022, replete with high fashion, trademark style, and a star-studded guest list. The theme for this year’s Gala was ‘America: An Anthology of Fashion’, with a dress code that focused on the grandeur and gilded glamour of America’s golden age (1870s-1890s). While "fashion's biggest night out" is famously known for its exclusivity, glamour, and costumes of lavish excess, it’s also very much a symbol of diversity, socio-political commentary, and the cultural zeitgeist of the times we live in.

Audiences across the world witnessed the event’s iconic red carpet action in real-time, thanks to the impeccable live-streaming and commentary broadcast on our digital platforms and across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Seamless coordination and live-stream for an event, especially one that draws millions of viewers across the world, is no small feat. Our Product, Design, Engineering, Architecture, Technology, Data, and Event teams partnered closely to create new design features, components, and templates to offer our audience an unforgettable experience.?

In this article, we take a closer look at some of the amazing behind-the-scenes (or should we say.. behind-the-screens) work done by Condé Nast’s Global Product Technology and Data team (GPTD) that enabled a memorably smooth and glitch-free experience for our viewers right from the get-go.

Pre-Event

The main goals at this stage were to drive awareness of the event, increase excitement and anticipation, maximize pre-show content reach, and explore user preferences.

The custom research team conducted a foundational user research survey to understand the core audience's motivations, needs, and pain points across Vogue.com websites. Based on survey results, the team crafted a comprehensive experience that provided immersive digital content (articles, videos, image slideshows, and more) on the history of the event, the creative and collaborative process behind the looks, event planning, and other forms of engagement. The team also learned that users wanted live updates on event timing and streaming details. To address this desire, the team created a countdown banner with a call to action (CTA) to sign up for the newsletter. The banner appeared on the homepage, tag page, channel pages, and articles/galleries.

Our technology teams were on the front lines for enabling and supporting the tentpole event —?managing intense time pressures in an unpredictable environment. The service portfolio management team negotiated deals to ensure that two new redundant circuits were installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The meeting and event technology team partnered with network engineers from digital communications to install these networks. The networks provided the bandwidth to power our live streams and gave the editorial teams robust upload speeds, which improved transmission and workflows.?

Before the event, the audio, video and events team obtained details of the opening and closing slates from the telescope, the production company we partnered with for the live streaming. To maximize engagement and global reach, the streaming was distributed across 20 sites including Allure, GQ, Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, and all Vogue brands and markets (these are known as interlude takeovers), in addition to Vogue’s own homepages and tag pages. Once the stream was ready for the public, our team tested the URLs, set up the Twitter broadcast, and started countdown timers on the websites, Facebook, and Instagram.

During Event?

The goals at this stage focused on increasing day-of engagement and content consumption on digital platforms’ tag page/homepage and driving higher user acquisition.

The technology team ensured our colleagues had a seamless end-user technology experience to develop content for Condé Nast’s social media platforms through global support’s on-site, desk-side support. The team supported 75+ users in the CNE and Vogue War Rooms at the Met and Astor House, plus the 1 World Trade Center War Room.

The product, design and engineering team created an image slideshow component with a call to action that led users to the full gallery. The slideshow resulted in a whopping 221% YoY increase in page views and a 55% YoY increase in search visits on the night of as compared to last year.

The audio, video and events team worked tirelessly to create new features and enhancements on websites and social media. Enhancements include:?

• Sticky Player - An extremely powerful and responsive feature that displays video content anywhere on your screen to increase website engagement. This feature allows users to scroll down the page and read articles, while the video player remains ‘sticky’ at the top of the screen so viewing is uninterrupted. The sticky player is compatible with both desktop and mobile views.?
• Full Bleed Video - This feature creates a highly immersive experience for our users by using full-bleed video teasers to introduce trending/relevant content. Full-bleed videos fill the screen without margins, like Instagram stories and Reels. The user clicks on the ‘Watch Now’ button to see a pre-roll ad, followed by the pertinent video or the live stream.
• Video Carousels with ‘Search’ Component - Users can now search for videos around specific topics, leading to an enhanced video discovery within index pages.
• Vertical Video Carousel -?Similar to Instagram Stories, our collection of short, but highly engaging videos was created using ‘Firework’ (a third-party component) to enhance page discovery and create a riveting experience for mobile-friendly formats.

The audio, video and events team also managed the technical aspects and architecture of the streaming:?

• Due to market requests, the team employed automatic captioning in English and Spanish. The software grabyo was integrated into the workflow and used to distribute clips in real-time to various markets including China. Previously, the post-production team carried out a much lengthier process after the event. The software Firework was used for live editing.
• Facebook and Instagram live streaming was managed directly by the encoder at the Metropolitan Museum who set up a primary and backup portrait live streaming service. For Twitter, two streams (one primary and a backup) were set up by telescope using Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure.

The team also added vertical and landscape live stream features, multi-language captioning, automated replays, real-time cross-market video sharing, and ensured secondary and tertiary AWS stacks as automated failovers in case of outages or overloading.

Post-Event

This stage concentrated on improving the image gallery experience for users through performance enhancements and new features.?

One such component was the voting feature on each image where users could answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question?“Is this look on the theme?”?users could only vote if they signed in, so many new users were encouraged to create an account. In its first 24 hours, the voting feature resulted in 36% more registrations than the projected goal, with a strong increase in visitors and time spent as compared to the previous year.

An Overwhelming Success

The Met Gala was a resounding success, breaking records and setting new milestones for traffic, engagement, and viewership. As a company with a constant finger on the pulse of modern life, our teams catered our content to the ways in which people consume it today — on multiple screens, at various times, over a variety of platforms.

Our teams strategized on fostering and building a community by transforming audience interest into readership, subscriptions, and recurring engagement. These efforts resulted in 100,000 newsletter signups in a seven-day window prior to the event (a 100% increase vs. last year) and over 30,000 new accounts (created for access to the Red Carpet Gallery and voting feature). Met-related video content generated 902 million views across all platforms globally, and the live stream generated 25 million total views. Real-time dispatches from the Met Gala on Instagram Reels and TikTok collectively generated over 290 million views, and Vogue gained 655,000 new followers.

While it was hard work and a gruelling effort, the results were memorable and indicative of how cross-team partnerships can create a true success story!

There's so much amazing work that happens every day across the Global Product, Technology and Data team. Read more about the team?here, and click?here?to stay updated on job posts and career opportunities!