Last Spring, Empire produced the national sales conference for over 1300 employees of a global financial services company at the Wyndham Anatole in Dallas, TX. For this most important annual program, Empire served as executive producer, responsible for all aspects of delivering two general sessions, eight breakout sessions, multiple awards programs and a banquet event and party. Achieving the right message for this conference was especially important as the client company sought to strike the right balance between focus on positive growth opportunities and acknowledgement of 9/11-related setbacks. Moreover, it was necessary to meet the challenge of delivering a conference of the highest quality consistent with past years' programs, with a greatly reduced budget. Empire's work on this program met all of our client's objectives and achieved very high ratings from attendees in terms of the value of content as well as the quality of execution. The success of this conference was instrumental in helping the client move beyond the recent difficulties, and to focus clearly on the opportunities of the future.

On June 11, 2002 Empire Entertainment produced for the 3rd year in a row, the Gerry Red Wilson Foundation Comedy Benefit Show in conjunction with The Toyota Comedy Festival at Town Hall in New York City. Each year, Empire works within the national comedy community to deliver the Toyota Comedy Festival's centerpiece show. The 2002 lineup featured performances by headline comedians including Dave Attell, Lewis Black, Jim Breuer, Eddie Brill, Adam Ferrara, Greg Fitzsimmons, Kevin Meaney, Patrice O'Neal, Colin Quinn, and Jon Stewart, with musical support by The Fenwicks.

Empire handled all talent booking, coordination, production & logistics for this public show, which has raised more than $100,000 for the Foundation. The Gerry Red Wilson Foundation is an organization dedicated to heightening awareness of and raising funds for research into a cure for meningitis.Empire is a leading producer of festival entertainment and is the industry leader in presenting comedians for corporate events.

As part of the First Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a star studded premiere charity screening of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones was held at New York's Embassy Suites. The event, held to benefit the Children's Aid Society, was held immediately prior to the film's first New York screening and attracted over 1000 children and VIP guests including Natalie Portman, Denis Leary, Susan Sarandon and Michael J. Fox. For this event Empire provided a team of amazing face painters to transform children and adults into Star War characters as well as some of New York's top swordsmen and women who, costumed in authentic Jedi garb, did battle with real light sabers throughout the party on catwalks high above the event floor. Another highlight of the event planned and executed by Empire was the Jedi Training camp where the children were taught some authentic Jedi moves and received their very own light sabers upon graduation.

In May of 2002, Empire Entertainment produced the first-ever TriBeCa Family Festival, a major public outdoor street festival that was a central component of the TriBeCa Film Festival sponsored by American Express. Empire designed and executed virtually every aspect of the Family Festival, whose purpose was to revitalize economic and community activity in lower Manhattan's TriBeCa district post-9/11.

Presented in an area encompassing 10-city blocks in the heart of TriBeCa, Empire brought together an outstanding team who successfully produced the event, managing the wide-ranging issues and concerns of the community, local businesses, and over a dozen city agencies. Empire's production team designed, arranged, and coordinated all aspects of the event including permitting, tenting, staging, power distribution, sound, lighting, signage, decor, and security. The Family Festival drew over 100,000 attendees and involved the construction of 50 tents, including an activities tent (sponsored by MTV), an arts & crafts tent (sponsored by Barilla Foods), a reading room & story-telling tent (sponsored by Scholastic), a sports games tent, a carnival games tent (including displays by Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum), a community organizations tent, a community schools tent, a massive outdoor cafe area served by over a dozen neighborhood restaurants, speed chess, sidewalk chalk art, and a face-painting area among many other features and activities. The Festival also featured a main performance stage, several smaller performance stages, and more than 100 stage and street performers.

Highlights of the event included storytelling by Whoopi Goldberg, a martial arts performance by the USA Shaolin Temple, and an outdoor concert by Arista Recording Artist, Kelly Levesque. The Family Festival was instrumental in generating revenue and restoring a sense of community to TriBeCa, and was one of New York City's major event successes of 2002.

Empire is already organizing an even larger TriBeCa Family Festival for 2003.

For a global pharmaceutical firm, Empire booked and produced a perfect evening of beach music under starry Caribbean skies with musical legends the Beach Boys (featuring original members Mike Love and Bruce Johnson). The event took place on the remote island of St. John in the U. S. Virgin Islands where all staging, sound, lighting, power and band equipment had to be brought in by boat. At this wildly successful party, guests danced in front of the stage, on the sand and even in the water to all of the Beach Boys hits including "Good Vibrations," "Surfin' USA," "California Girls" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice." The client was thrilled with the show and the opportunity proves that Empire can work its magic even on difficult, foreign shores.

For the fourth year in a row, Empire Entertainment served as event producer for The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation's Kids For Kids event. This star-studded event took place at New York's Wollman Rink, which is located in the heart of Central Park. For this large, upscale event, Empire designed and supervised every aspect of the production from tenting, staging, and entertainment, to permits, activities, and security. Empire took on the formidable challenges of heavy rains and flooding to make the show go on. The 2002 Kids for Kids event was attended by over 2,000 people and featured games and activities hosted by over 100 celebrities including Richard Gere, Zhang Ziyi (from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Michael Douglas, Carmen Electra, Al Franken, Natalie Portman, Caroline Rhea, and many others. This year Empire booked the musical guest, J Records recording artist O-Town. In past years, Empire has delivered headliners including Mandy Moore, Eden's Crush and Destiny's Child.

Kids for Kids 2002 was chosen by industry publication BizBash as one of the Top 100 Events of 2002.

When a multinational computer company needed to find a special speaker with unique criteria for an incentive program in Hawaii, Empire worked with the company's chosen production company to identify an out-of-the ordinary choice that would far exceed the client's expectations. The speaker needed to appeal to employees throughout Asia but, if possible, would also have an American or Hawaiian connection. The client wanted the speaker to deliver a wow! factor but they also wanted a compelling and inspiring life story. Leveraging our connections in Japan, Empire was able to identify and deliver the highly respected, just-retired Sumo wrestling Yokozuna (Grand Champion), Akebono, to appear at the program. Akebono, an American (a Hawaiian native) and a sports celebrity in Japan on par with Michael Jordan in America, was a knockout with the hundreds of attendees, almost all of whom waited to greet the star personally after his speech. Empire is the industry's leading one-stop-shop for speakers of every genre and is the ideal resource when you are looking for 'Out-of-the-box' ideas that are hard to find on the 'usual suspects' speaker bureau lists.

In another example of creative cross-fertilization between industry-specific event forms and the fusion of Empire's creative, talent & production expertise, Empire produced a stunt-oriented fashion show for an automobile manufacturer to help them launch their new line of sportswear and accessories along with a new vehicle. The event was held in conjunction with the New York Auto Show at New York's notoriously challenging Jacob Javits Center. For this high-energy, one time only press event, aerial/acrobatic troupe Antigravity provided both audience thrills and the runway models to style the new line, Empire supervised all staging, sound, lighting, image projection, technical design & rigging, union labor negotiations, talent, stage management, music, costuming, choreography and special effects including a surprise vehicle reveal.

For the fourth consecutive year, Empire produced and staged the Twentieth Century FOX Retail Summit at the St. Regis Hotel, Los Angeles, CA. This year's program included a keynote presentation by movie icon Shirley Temple Black and a live performance by world-renowned ice sculptors Fear No Ice that was inspired by the FOX animated feature Ice Age. Empire was again successful in delivering a conference that greatly exceeded the expectations of our clients, managing every aspect from program development, staging, sound, lighting, video and creative design, to décor, onsite management and logistics. A leading global producer of filmed entertainment, Twentieth Century FOX repeatedly turns to Empire Entertainment for assistance with their business communications productions.

When 20th Century Fox sought to use a segment on the Today Show featuring original M*A*S*H* motion picture actors Elliot Gould, Tom Skerret and Sally Kellerman to promote the DVD release of the M*A*S*H* movie, Empire was hired to create a background for the segment. Working with limitations such as a small space on the Today Show set and an extremely short amount of set-up time, Empire created a realistic and convincing background that properly set the stage for the interview and created a visual that helped FOX to accomplish the promotion it sought. The Today Show segment aired on January 9, 2002.