Cinch recently commissioned us to provide a temporary Christmas & New Year installation projecting their brand logo and Christmas message with Cinch purple illumination onto the National Lift Tower in Northampton, UK. The UK’s tallest testing centre scaling at 127 Metres. Kvant Laser Projection & Robe Lighting fixtures were projecting from the cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens which is home to Northampton Saints Rugby. From inside their Fan Zone, we installed equipment in temporary locations that would give the height required and safety from the public, at a 250 Metres throw distance being achieved onto the Tower taking full advantage of the length of the tower.  

Where did cinch’s outdoor marketing take place?

Cinch’s mission is simple – remove the faff from buying and changing cars, giving customers more choice, with more ease. That’s it. The online car marketplace are one of Saints’ Elite Partners and the Northampton Saints Rugby Ground is now called cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens. With Big Outdoor Laser & Light brand Marketing, Cinch have been able to reach customers across Northampton town including passing traffic and provide their Christmas & New Year message at the same time. This all being possible with a simple, yet effective big marketing concept.

Equipment Specification – What we used & How we did it

When specifying equipment for temporary outdoor installations, we only use tried and tested fixtures that have proved themselves time and time again with accessories and installation methods that we know work and are up to the job to live outdoors in all the weather conditions the UK can throw at them.

For this Temporary lighting and laser installation, we included one of our Spectrum 30W LD laser projector housed into a custom IP Enclosure that is keeping the fixture running at optimal working temperature with its built-in thermostat both day & night and most importantly, keeping the rain out! Our Spectrum series represents power, precision, robustness, cutting edge technology and top of the range features, which are often unique and make the Spectrums what they are! Bright, reliable, fast-scanning and a pleasure to work with. We used this projector for displaying the brand logo ‘’Cinch’’ and the following Christmas & New Year message.

As standard, the laser projector is running Pangolins FB4 control device which offers us a whole range of useful tools for running, programming & show control. We used Beyond Ultimate laser show creation software to programme the laser graphics, being able to provide cinch with a mock-up render prior to site and then edit onsite to suit the projection surface.

Utilising our outdoor lighting hire stock of Robe IPointe 65’s moving heads, we achieved even coverage of the town facing side of the tower in cinch purple. Using them more as a long-distance wash fixture. Ultimately a deep colour, but utilising Robes years of development into fixtures and beam quality, the IPointe 65’s had no issue in producing this even colour over 250 beam throw distance, covering right up to the top of the 127-metre tower.

Robe is our go to brand for outdoor IP lighting that can withstand the elements, having reliability outdoors is key for a smooth temporary installation run and here is why – The iPointe65® is a bright, high-performance multifunctional luminaire that works equally well as a beam, spot, effects and wash fixture.

Designed, developed, and manufactured, to be sealed against water and particle ingress, thereby strictly adhering to their IP65 rating, you can be confident of both its protection and performance. iPointe’s aluminium housing gives a dust-free environment for the optical, gobo and colour systems, eliminating the need for frequent cleaning and maintenance.

Due to space available and the angle they needed to project from, we opted for having the Robe lighting fixtures in spread out locations inside the Fan Zone at the cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens. This required the need for a wireless control solution, as dmx cabling from point to point was not an option due to it being in public spaces. We needed to make sure all the IPointe65’s received the same control signal to turn on and off at the correct times. For this, we installed some of our High-Powered Point to Point (PtP) network links sending ArtNet control signal to the locations away from the control point.

With Local DMX nearer the control point running from a custom PC inside an IP Enclosure running Avolites Titan Go. Having an inbuilt ArtNet node inside the Robe fixture is a great feature and is helpful in a wide range of situations, this enabled us to go into the fixture via ArtNet from the PtP dish and then come out as cabled DMX to the other lights in the same location.

Simple Scheduling 

A major part of the whole lighting and laser graphic temporary installation requirement was for it to be turned on when the sun was setting and then turned off just before midnight. Utilising features both inside Pangolins FB4 & Avolites Titan Go, we were able to run the whole setup on a daily automated schedule that requires no assistant from an operator.

FB4 attached to our Kvant units has a great feature called AutoPlay, in which you can recall previously created content that has been exported to the laser projector, in this case our Spectrum 30W LD was uploaded with the ‘’cinch’’ content and Christmas/New Year message. Once the content is uploaded to the projector and daily or weekly schedule is set, you can leave the projector to run having faith that FB4 will come on and off at the desired times, on the exact schedule you set.

Titan Go, which is the PC version of the Avolites software used worldwide was our choice for control of the Robe IPointe65’s moving head fixtures, needing to run to the same schedule as the Kvant Laser, we used the inbuilt feature of running a simple cue list to the internal clock that would turn the lamp on and off which included setting the positions at the correct times. It has become a simple solution that has worked well with the powerful Avolites Titan Software.

Our control solution

For a fully automated control package that we could monitor and access remotely, we designed and built an IP Enclosure which houses the control computer for Avolites Titan Go & Pangolin Beyond, PoE network switch & 4G Router, gaining remote access for updates is great but for seeing what is going on is another area we wanted to have for this temporary installation. Therefore, we installed two HikVision ColorVu Network bullet cameras that we can view remotely and check the live feed in full colour both day and night. They are placed in areas so we can monitor both the National Lift Tower projection area and the overall setup to ensure that all the IPoints65’s and Spectrum 30W LD laser projector we have located in the Fan Zone are outputting light at right times.

Big Outdoor laser & light advertising brand projection

Using this lighting and laser equipment, we have been able to create a big bold marketing statement for cinch over this Christmas 2021 duration that can be seen by thousands of people on this iconic building in Northampton. If you are passing by the area anytime soon, be sure to check it out and share your pictures with or social media channels.

From all the team at MLE Pyrotechnics, we thank you for all your support during 2021, we wish you a very Merry Christmas & Happy New Year. We look forward to hearing from you in 2022.