Vodafone #FeelTheConnection 5G enabled Haptic Suits

Client: Vodafone

Music has the power to connect people through unforgettable experiences. Vodafone’s ambition was to use the power of its 5G network and innovative haptic technology to make live music inclusive, born from the fact live music and festivals can be exclusionary experiences for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.

As Official Connectivity Partner of Mighty Hoopla, it provided Vodafone with a credible platform to develop a technology solution to a real-life issue and encourage more inclusive experiences at live events. Working with technology partners, Music: Not Impossible and Unit9, Vodafone combined cutting-edge haptic and AI technology with its 5G network to enable deaf and hard-of-hearing fans to feel live music in a new way through innovative haptic suits, which were a world first for festivals. The suits translated music from artists performing on stage into a series of vibrations felt across the body, so deaf and hard-of-hearing fans could feel music in a new way. Crowd reactions were also recorded and fed back into the suits in real-time using Vodafone’s 5G network and translated using bespoke machine learning software. Vodafone invited members of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community to experience the suits during artist’s sets including Jessie Ware, Steps and Sugababes. The suit’s design and campaign content considered the needs of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, ensuring the experience was genuinely inclusive. The suits were a resounding success with fantastic feedback from festival-goers, one saying it ‘made them feel like superman!’ and generating 100% positive/neutral reaction to content distributed post event.