Empire Brings The National Geographic Channel To Life with an Innovative Upfront Event at Metrazur

When the National Geographic Channel sought to bring their channel to life and to express their message of "The Difference Revealed" to their target audience of advertisers and media buyers, they turned to Empire Entertainment to make it all happen. Working to the client's brief to secure a location that had plenty to reveal, Empire was able to secure Charlie Palmer's Metrazur space, located on the East Balcony of the historic Grand Central Terminal. The event space was designed with a beautiful lighting plan that up-lit the Terminal's 100-foot walls in the Channel's colors of red & yellow. Red & yellow floral displays, votive candles and fabrics complemented a giant 18' wide X 7' high lighted logo billboard that overlooked the main concourse of the terminal from atop the venue's marble stairs which were modeled after those at the Paris Opera House. Inside the cocktail area, Empire designed and created a series of "Video Tables" consisting of 51" flat-screen monitors built to display face up inside cocktail tables made of material that matched the marble of the terminal's grand staircases. These six bar-height Video Tables were capped with a non-scratch Lucite surface and surrounded with bar stools. Empire created a series of yellow and red animations for these tables to tie-in with the lighting and decor in the venue. The tables were also used to display the presentation, and to loop 'video wallpaper,' an animated logo and a slide show of National Geographic Channel images throughout the event.

To complement the amazing food and specialty cocktails provided by Metrazur, Empire arranged to have two large ice sculptures created for the bars: one of a tornado and one of a volcano that emitted dry-ice steam from its caldera. To promote the channel's programming, there were a series of interactive activities, each themed to a different series or special. For Relentless Enemies, an animal station featured a red kangaroo, a black leopard cub, two Syrian black bear cubs, and a 5' green iguana. Handlers fed and cradled the animals and answered questions from guests. A large-scale version of the Operation game with a life-size Bigfoot called "Yeti Operation," was a fun a tie-in to the channel's "Is It Real?" series.

The channel promoted its Spartacus special with a photo booth, where guests donned gladiator, Athenian citizen, and other costumes and posed for digital snapshots printed on-site. A sculptor created small-scale versions of famous buildings and ships featured in the "Mega Structures" series out of white clay. Also on hand was a space-themed ride to promote "The Space Race."As an extra special treat, Empire arranged for guests to have special VIP tours led by Grand Central chief historian, Dan Brucker, which included Grand Central's top secret underground power station, Manhattan's deepest point, which will be featured in the channel's Inside Grand Central special. Following a presentation of channel programming by senior executives, guests were beckoned to the balconies, where Empire had arranged for a choreographed stunt featuring 36 people to suddenly unfurl yellow strips of fabric on the floor of the terminal to create the shape of National Geographic's yellow border logo. The perfectly timed stunt generated spontaneous applause. In the words of the client, the well-attended event "Was truly a unique experience for our guests. It even caught the attention of local and national media."

Empire is a leading producer of event marketing programs and is an essential partner to businesses seeking to create experiential, tangible and interactive representations of their brands.