Corona
The digital layer behind Corona at the Olympics.
The Milano Cortina Winter Olympics and Paralympics ran for two months. Behind every Casa Corona venue, every athlete celebration, every broadcast booking, a digital layer kept it connected. We built all pieces of it in one winter, as design and development partner for Wink and Corona. Four things at once, staggered across the Games calendar, with live support through both the Olympics and the Paralympics. Not a project that ended when the code went live.
The idea
A winter to remember across the Alps, made richer and smoother by our digital layer.
Corona was all over Milano Cortina: Casa Corona venues, athlete celebrations, hospitality for the media, the NOCs and the teams around them. All of it physical, live, and unforgiving of a glitch. With the opening ceremony weeks away, the digital layer to run it didn't exist yet. Four briefs, each with their own audience and tight launch windows. Wink brought us in to build all of it, as design and development partner, across the winter.
What we made
One app designed, three products built end to end.
A native app to guide guests through both Games came first. We designed it, Octagon built it. The other three we made end to end.
Golden Bottle: only athletes could order a personalised golden Corona bottle with their name engraved. We turned the ordering into a moment: motion, a spinning bottle, the Corona Cero look. Underneath the design sat a chain that had nothing to do with looks. The athlete holds an accreditation pass to the camera. The pass design had to line up with the interface exactly. The system checks the pass is real, the message goes to a legal review, nothing gets engraved without a yes.
Two platforms ran quieter. The reservation system handled bookings for NOCs and broadcasters who wanted a Corona location for a celebration, a meeting or a press moment. Operational, and no room for downtime during the Games. Time Cero tied it all together: every Corona location, timetable, daily update and event recap in one place, refreshed every day of the Games.
What we did
On call from the opening ceremony to the Paralympic closing.
The Games started. Then the Paralympics started. We stayed on, not as a formality but as the team the crew in Milan reached when something needed fixing, changing or extending in real time. Three months, four products, two Games, one digital layer that kept it all running. The project ended at the closing ceremony, not at the launch.