About the Event
Be the Jungle was a large 3-day corporate event held in Boston to bring together executives and client leads from around the globe for a large Consulting and Tech company. In tandem with a full Production Studio and several other branches of the company, we worked to create a truly 360 immersive experience over several months.
Their business had entered a new era of disruption – one more akin to the jungle as opposed to the relatively neat and tidy ‘gardens’ of the past. We ran with this story and concept we called “Be The Jungle”, creating a call to action to embrace and adapt to the change. From illustrated storybooks to animated videos to event planning and space design, the POD pulled out all the stops on this project. Whether it was shirts, curating sights, sounds and smells, awards, printed materials or swag, the our team had a hand in almost every event touchpoint. And to boot, the theme was kept a secret through a decoy brand - jump to the bottom for details on that.
Event website designed for the event. I also worked with the team to design functionality and experience of the site.
To help guide attendees through the 3-day event, they were given field notes. This book was 100+ pages with all the information they needed - schedules, cohort information, in depth write-ups about all vendors and speaker. Guests received a version personalized to their cohort.
Overall Design and Experience
In bringing “Be the Jungle” to life, we decided to use stroked outlines of animals over bright jungle scenes, so that as you looked an the animal, they we’re literally “being” the jungle, adapting to their surroundings and the ever changing landscape, just as business must to survive. We defined a set of animals that embodied specific traits of adaptation and survival, as well as developed and image library and style guide to define the concept and execution.
We then built on this idea to influence the attendee experience. Each attendee was sorted into an one of ten animal “cohort” through the answer to a survey, and experienced the event with their cohort. We designed 10 of everything, from swag to name badges. The attendees competed to earn the most points by the end of the event, both for their cohorts and individual. Points we awarded for attending sessions, breakouts, interacting with vendors, and various other activities.
Working with the production company, we helped transform the hotel space into a Jungle, with imagery, plants, graphics and videos. We also worked directly with the companies staff to plan the second by second run of show, and design all presentation materials, from kick-off videos to technical presentations, the group chants and leaderboards. There were two evening events outside the hotel space that we also designed assets for, including location design, menus, and awards.
We also wrote and designed a children’s book-style storybook about the companies journey, tying it into the event theme. By the end of the event, we had design 1000s of pieces of collateral, including a full website and app, a 100 page guide book, staff shirts, scores of signage (print, animated and static), vendor booths, and 10 versions of all swag, including bags, stickers, guide books, bags, and name badges.
Attendees we’re sorted in a cohort groups based on how they answered a survey, and given a badge accordingly. These badges could be scanned at multiple touch points throughout the event, earning guests points for themselves and their team. Based on their cohort, they were given animal-specific swag.
Animated leaderboard design
Wait, TWO themes?
On top of creating all of these assets, the theme was kept a secret, so a generic brand has to be used for all promotional materials and “flipped” when the event launched. That meant designing a second version of all marketing and promo materials, including a full decoy version of the website and app that was purposely boring and corporate . This added to the shock and awe factor of the event.n
