Digitizing the World Press Photo Contest Experience for Photography Enthusiasts

The World Press Photo (WPP) Foundation seeks to inspire understanding of our world through quality photojournalism. Committed to setting high standards in the domain, it strives to generate wide public interest in and appreciation for the work of photographers and facilitates free exchange of information. Launched in 1955 and conducted annually, its flagship contest – the World Press Photo Contest – is one of the most celebrated photography competitions of its kind.The WPP website is accessed by millions of photography enthusiasts and hence, needs to be multilingual, robust, and user-friendly. It must be updated annually with engaging content that meets WPP’s stringent editorial style sheets and navigational guidelines.

Consumers of a globalized economy are demanding more personalized, relevant content, seamlessly delivered via multiple channels with instantaneous responses in innovative ways. To further strengthen its advocacy of barrier-free information exchange, WPP saw an opportunity in digitizing the Contest 2014 experience for its followers. However, the challenge was to deliver the Contest website in record time. In addition, WPP required ongoing support with three other sites: Corporate, Education, and Multimedia.

The Solution

The Foundation engaged Capgemini Digital Customer Experience (DCX) as a technology partner to overcome the challenges. Initially, a pilot project was announced to build and test all websites – Contest 2014, Corporate, JSM 2014-Education, and Multimedia.DCX is Capgemini’s response to its clients’ need to drive customer-centricity through Digital Transformation. The team collaborates with organizations, bringing them closer to their customers, in order to deliver a superlative, multichannel experience. DCX solutions are built upon Capgemini’s market-leading research with MIT, an unbeatable culture of collaboration, expertise in digital transformation across sectors, a strong partner portfolio, and a global delivery footprint.

The DCX team delivered the website projects with a successful launch of the Contest 2014 site well on time. The sites were in line with WPP’s expectations, and the design was perfectly aligned with its style guide. The outcome was a multi-lingual, user-friendly, and engaging experience, connecting participants with the judges and a global audience. The other sites were spruced up and saw continued, business-as-usual support from Capgemini.

The Foundation also hosts an annual press conference to announce the contest awards. Its website witnesses peak traffic on this day – an equivalent of traffic over a period of four months. Capgemini created a number of automated migration scripts and facilities that allowed WPP to copy information with one click. This made the entire process much easier for WPP’s Marketing and Communications teams. The team was also instrumental in the successful migration of more than 20,000 nodes and over 40GB of media files from external sources to the WPP corporate website.

The Result

The outcome was appreciated by Sander Zwart, Manager Online, World Press Photo in his own words: “By virtue of the industrialized process that Capgemini follows, we are able to move 80%-90% of the output to production immediately.” Following the successful delivery of these projects, WPP announced plans to explore new opportunities of collaboration with Capgemini, which include the development and testing of an all-new corporate website.

How WPP and Capgemini worked together

Capgemini used the Drupal 7 CMS to build a highly maintainable WPP Contest 2014 site in days. It leveraged partnerships with Salesforce, Cloudinary, and SSL technologies to accomplish this. To test the efficiency of all websites, a thorough load test was performed using performance testing tools, such as J-meter and Blazemeter.With over 250 Drupal consultants located offshore, Capgemini offers a seamless project delivery experience. The team leveraged an Agile Scrum methodology, combining it with the extensive use of JIRA, a leading, enterprise-grade project-tracking application. A key principle of this methodology is its recognition that, during the course of the project, WPP’s expectation of the outcome was subject to change. This understanding, combined with defined member responsibilities and effective tracking, ensured on-time and quality delivery of a superlative, digital experience.