Empire Serves as Creative Director for a Major Corporate Marketing Conference
Seattle, WA
February 2008
Expanding into a relatively new role with a longtime entertainment services client, Empire served as creative director for a major, annual marketing conference in Seattle, WA attended by over 2000 marketers. The one day conference featured keynote speeches by the company's CEO, it's head of marketing, Nothwestern University marketing professor Mohanbir Sawhney and Marketing guru and bestselling author Seth Godin. The conference also featured a marketing excellence awards program, five tracks and three sessions of meeting breakouts, opening and keynote video packages, and a post-conference networking expo. For this major undertaking, Empire worked closely with the client's marketing team and executive management over the period of several months, adding value in many areas including set design & room layout, lighting design, agenda development & refinement, scripting of segment & award program wraparounds, and writing and working with the client's impressive in-house video studios to produce the meeting's videos.
In the area of set & room design, Empire was tasked with finding economical ways to transform the cavernous expo hall into an intimate, immersive venue that would bring the attendees closer to the stage. The solution: to orient the room on a diagonal and spreading the seating more widely, effectively reducing the distance between the stage and the rear rows of seating. Empire also designed and worked with the client's production provider to implement a series of innovative ceiling 'pods' lit with LED strips that glowed and changed color to match the stage content and video tones, enveloping the audience with the content. In terms of content development, Empire worked throughout the process to develop a look, feel, tone and theme to make the program entertaining, inspiring and effective in conveying client's key messages. Prior to the conference and onsite in rehearsals, Empire worked closely with each presenter to best integrate their remarks into an overall theme and flow. Empire is a leading meeting production company with deep experience in designing and producing world class business meetings.
With staff creative directors, writers, graphic designers, video producers, production designers, technical directors and stage managers, Empire provides turnkey service to corporations looking to present state-of-the-art business communications.