Our client, the insurance company Washington Mutual, had an annual incentive program called the President's Club, that had been running successfully for a number of years. But this year, the company was operating with a new administration that wanted changes made to the program. They desired a more relaxed event so attendees would have more time together, plus they wanted to make tangible changes to the program. The most significant one would be to move the awards dinner from the final night to the second night.
The awards dinner is the client's most important event and is usually held on the final night, giving us a full week to make the event spectacular. This year, because the client's VIPs could only attend the first few nights of the program, the awards were held on the second night. The hotel had only one main ballroom, so this required that the first general session be held in the ballroom in the morning of the awards night, and the second general session would be held in that same room the next morning. This meant that we had five hours to do what normally required 10 or more hours.
Preplanning was the name of this game and Megan Reynolds, senior event producer overseeing this event, and her team took several innovative steps to ensure that, even before that first general session, we had most of the room setup.
First, we installed and lit the entire ceiling treatment of lush, red fabric. It was then rolled up and hidden under a large fabric cap that fit into the circular truss we designed for the center of the room. Red-rose-patterned drapery was installed to create screen surrounds, and then flipped back over a line of pipe and drape so no one in the general session saw it. The night before, initial sound checks were run, dancers blocked out their routines, and the dance floor was installed.
One of the biggest challenges at this point was how the hotel banquet staff would set 90 tables. We were using square tables angled toward the stage so that every seat at the table had a view. Once the general session was over, we would need to use the middle of the room to bring the ceiling treatment down and rig it to the room's outer perimeter. However, we learned that the banquet staff wanted to start setup from the middle and work its way out in order to get its spacing correct. After much discussion about tradition versus our timing constraints, the staff saw that the only way to get 900 chairs covered and 90 tables set was to start from the outer perimeter. As soon as general session was over, the banquet staff began covering the 900 chairs. The ceiling treatment was removed from its "cap" in the truss and rigged. Separate stage crews began installing the stage backdrop for the awards and for the party. A final sound check for the party band, Haute Chile, was done and its stage was pushed back on a rolling riser to hide it during the awards. A sound check for the smaller ensembles and a rehearsal by the Washington Mutual VIPs, all took place within the five-hour setup window.
Finally, huge bamboo lanterns were hung on the circular truss and the tables were set with black square chargers. Because the event was to be modeled on the Academy Awards, the final touch was rolling out a red carpet and setting up the stands for the emcees who would interview the arrivals and the video that would broadcast them into the ballroom. After the awards, we tore down everything so that the room was ready to go for the second morning's general session.
Through our efforts to give attendees the opportunity to really connect with one another, this program was much more intimate than any other President's Club event. More than any other year, we saw people talking, laughing, completely relaxed, and sitting with old and new friends over dinner. They were literally "breaking bread" with friends in an environment that was completely conducive to that.
How did we achieve that? Through seating at long, family-style tables with low casual centerpieces; lighting and music that were kept low during dinner to encourage conversation; food and beverage presented in a relaxed buffet style with bottles of wine placed at the tables so that attendees could pour wine for themselves and their friends; and through events that gave everyone something to talk about. In all, these elements added up to a program that met the client's objective to give this group a high-quality, authentic experience and to create the interaction that would continue to foster the company morale, high sales, and internal communication that are so vital to a successful corporation.
Andrea Michaels is president of Extraordinary Events, an award-winning event management and production firm that produces events in the U.S. and internationally. Based in Sherman Oaks, California, Extraordinary Events has offices in Orlando, Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco, and Mexico, and soon to be in Germany and Japan. She can be reached at (818) 783-6112.