Connect appointed as build agency on new Land Rover website

Connect has been appointed as build partner for Land Rover’s new global website.

The appointment comes on the back of its successful work earlier this year with Jaguar Land Rover on its new website configurator.

As part of its remit, the Wolverhampton full service agency will work with Land Rover's web content management partner on the development and integration of Land Rover’s new website and will work with Land Rover’s other creative agencies in delivering the project. As before, Connect’s digital team will power, build and deploy the new Land Rover configurator.

Jose Espinosa, Connect’s director of digital services, said of the appointment: “This is a further demonstration of our capabilities in delivering innovative digital solutions as well as managing budgets and agencies. We’ve got some of the best digital brains in the business and it’s fantastic to be recognised for this again.”

2009 is proving to be one of Connect’s best ever years. So far this year the agency has picked up briefs from WD-40, Volkswagen, Goodyear Dunlop, Uniball and Ekornes.

Picture shows Jose Espinosa

Global Success for Connect's Digital Pioneers

NEW JAGUAR LAND ROVER CONFIGURATOR LAUNCHED TO GLOBAL CRITICAL ACCLAIM

A new Jaguar Land Rover configurator, created by Connect’s digital team, has been launched to coincide with the introduction of the new Jaguar XJ.

The vehicle configurator is one of the most advanced in the global motoring industry and has been created by Connect’s chief technical officer Jose Espinosa and head of enterprise IT Adam Perry.

The Connect system is based on a rules engine, similar to a database, which drives the site and the images.

Such is the complexity but brilliance of the new system, other global brands both inside and out of the motoring industry have already enquired about the new technology.

Speaking of the new configurator, Jose Espinosa (pictured), said: “Adam and I brought many years of digital experience to this project. This configurator is built using the experience gained working on other projects for Ford and Jaguar Land Rover. It was designed from the ground up to be easy and simple for clients and other developers to build the front end of the website.”

The new system is totally global. Adam Perry said: “We designed the system with the web in mind, making it cacheable. To this end we worked with Akamai, the world leader in powering dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, which means that the configurator can be copied thousands of times across the world, improving the speed and reliability of the system.

"For example, if you are a consumer in Australia, you will largely be communicating with an Australian based web server (cache), which is obviously much quicker than communicating with a server outside of your region.”

“We’ve been supporting Jaguar Land Rover for six years, and it is great to see this evolution in site design to include an auto configurator run completely over our globally distributed network,” said Brad Rinklin, vice president of global marketing, Akamai. “This highly interactive feature demonstrates Jaguar Land Rover’s commitment to leveraging the Internet to maximise the customer experience.

With Akamai, Jaguar Land Rover will be able to offer superior site performance on a global scale, while minimising the resources required at their data center. This ends up being the best of both worlds for their end users and operations teams.”

Connect’s clients include Goodyear Dunlop, Amtico, Volkswagen, Tarmac, Costa, Triton and Bentley Motors.