Making a difference through work is not just focusing on the client, but the employees who make it happen. As part of the Monthly Employee engagement events, the idea was to have a themed event each month and create interactive and engaging experiences for employees.
For the largest employee event of the year, the All Employee Town Holiday Party took place. The turn out was huge, and the planning for this was even larger.
The planning started in summer time, several months prior to the event. The idea of the event was: A Town Hall fused with a Holiday Party. Freddie Wonderland. A winter wonderland theme, universal to all, fused with the gingerbread man and a gingerbread house contest.
As the lead designer, I also art directed the entire event and visuals with our video production team (for the teasers), web team, internal communications team (for their internal promotions and articles), designers (helping with the production design of all of the collateral), and event planning team. I lead the full team to showcase this event from the visuals, to all of the tactics that took place, as well as worked with the events team on the logistics bringing the vision to life. It was all hands on deck, and a great outcome!
All divisions were tasked to get together for a gingerbread house contest and were provided kits to do so. All employees participated in the event, and the gingerbread displays were set up in the campus lobbies for all to see and vote.
We created a Save the Date page for more info. Art directed by me and designed by our lead web designer. We also created a Gingerbread House Contest Voting page for employees to vote for their favorite house once they saw the displays.
Teaser Videos:
With the Director of Creative Services, I art directed the following 3 teaser videos to promote our Holiday Party and Gingerbread House Contest. Costumes, props, visuals, and storyboard was art directed by me and led by our Creative Director. To bring the vision board that the Gingerbread man has in the teasers to life, we infused our vision of AI to create his vision board. I also art directed the visuals with our team on all the teasers, and worked with our video editors and animators to bring this vision to life.
Watch the videos below:
The Gingerbread Man:
The Gingerbread man soon became a lead mascot teasing our Holiday Party. The creative production team and I curated the costume for the video, and this was used for our mascots as well. The mascot was seen in our internal communication articles, promotions and the mascots showed up to the party as well. It was a huge hit and employees said it sparked joy throughout the company.
The Party:
Working closely with our event planning team, I art directed and led the visuals, decorations, and theme of the party. I led a team of production designers as we designed all of digital and physical visuals, as well as planned out the Gingerbread Displays and the signage. We even had a team get down and dirty to create our divisional arrows to point to each house. We also curated the gingerbread house kits. It was a team effort and a vision that came to life!
The party entailed of a 360 photobooth, backdrops, props and photo cut outs, a gingerbread man and lady photo cut out, hot chocolate display, cookie takeaways, food, games, movies, and so much more! We worked together collectively to create the visuals across the board, as I led the design and production, and worked with vendors. I also created animated gifs for our digital displays!
The Gingerbread House displays came to life, and employees were able to vote for their favorite house and look through the displays! We set up the displays the day before! There was a total of 13 plus gingerbread houses. In the office and througout our regional offices!
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Gingerbread House Displays and Turnout
Town Holiday Party Visuals
