Toy brand Mattel is utilizing a variety of Clear-Com platforms at the heart of its voice communications infrastructure for the corporate video production team that supports the company’s branding and messaging in producing customer presentations and corporate productions.
“Clear-Com offered us a network-friendly communications system to tie our six studios and our main corporate tower together, an extensive infrastructure that we need to keep connected,” states Mattel senior AV technicial and audio engineer Jose Robles. “We host many live event presentations with broadcast quality content and technology, bringing people together from all over the world, and have created an environment for high-value production and presentations.
“That’s why we opted for the Arcadia IP platform and FreeSpeak II technology – it’s perfect for our corporate AV over IP environment that requires a large deployment of wireless users across multiple locations. We often must expand our communications to multiple venues and integrate outside participants or remote members of our production team. By using our existing IP network, we can quickly and reliably expand our intercom system.”
Arcadia Central Station is Mattel’s central communications hub that delivers a workflow platform helping the company deliver brand experiences for customers such as Disney, Amazon, Costco, and more. Arcadia is tied into network switches, utilizes Clear-Com’s LQ Series of IP connectivity interfaces, and supports third-party Dante devices.
Together, this has created an IP communications platform across the entire Mattel comms infrastructure. Robles and his AV team can now manage all communications from a single location without the need to have matrixed intercom systems at different ends of the network connections. In addition, the Clear-Com configuration software allows the AV team to set up users and troubleshoot without sending an on-site team to one of the production studios. Further, the system can be expanded by adding more transceivers and beltpacks.
“We also added fiber throughout our buildings, which combined with our Arcadia IP intercom system has been a game-changer,” adds Robles. “This is helping us futureproof our infrastructure against increased video bandwidth, allowing us to transmit more data, audio, and video. I can simply patch any channel with another building now through fiber. Plus, we can transmit our content and communicate effectively during our productions over longer distances than ever before, and without signal interference. All ideal for our campus-wide AV systems, conferences, and presentations.”
Mattel also opted for Agent-IC mobile app licenses, which add intercom functionality on mobile devices. This app connects to Mattel’s network, allowing remote production team members access to its intercom channels. Ribles: “It’s been like communications glue for our team, and we were able to maintain our usual workflow seamlessly. Agent-IC is a vital part of the success of our productions as it provides an intercom panel on a mobile device, giving our remote team the communications connectivity they need.
“I really love the combination of Clear-Com technology – the wired and wireless options plus Agent-IC. It’s really helped remove a lot of the unnecessary back-and-forth emails that can waste time and energy for our production team as conversations are now in real-time. From a technical standpoint, I can fine-tune the intercom channels, adjust the gain to improve the sound for comms users, and troubleshoot with audio engineers in another building, all from my central control room.”
