When more than 1,200 Quest Software employees went to Anaheim Hilton in California for the company’s annual fiscal end celebration, NXT FY25, the setting looked more like one created for a music festival. With that, it wouldn’t have been all too surprising if some attendees questioned if they were in the right place. Luckily, the inventive branding by edgefactory ensured they knew where they were.
The organizers at Quest wanted their event to resemble something like the SXSW music and film festival, which is held annually in Austin, Texas. What was created could give that event a run for its money.
Defining a Theme
“[Quest] is really out of the box,” says Brian Cole, president and CEO for edgefactory. “They didn’t want to do things conservatively. They wanted to make a statement. We had a big challenge, because last year at Virgin Las Vegas [for Quest’s NXT FY24], it was all sports themed. It was probably one of the coolest events we’d ever done. So, we had to raise the bar, and we didn’t really have a theme.”
In thinking about this year’s festival theme, Cole wondered “How do you define that?” That was the team’s biggest challenge, he remarks. “How do we define a theme to the audience, so they felt like they weren’t at a business meeting, but at a festival? And that’s what we did.” He notes the visualizations of eye-catching, colorful branding everywhere in the hotel, all created with this in mind: for attendees to “feel like this entire hotel was there just for them.”
The Three Es
An around-the-clock DJ, on-stage gameshows and TVs throughout the venue showcasing employees in a rage room breaking old company products via a Quest in-room TV channel: these are several forms of entertainment attendees laid witness to during the event. The gameshows, which were forms of popular TV gameshows like Family Feud (they’ve done Jeopardy as well), pitted different departments from Quest against each other for office bragging rights.
Read More: Festivalization: To Be or Not to Be?
The games also let the audience get involved, giving them the chance to answer the questions being asked on stage.
“I always say there are three core pieces missing from most meetings: energy, emotion and edge,” Cole says. He references the fake set edgefactory made to foster excitement among the crowd. “[It] looked like something you might see on Bravo or Andy Cohen’s show. We made a set with some of their branding in it, and the host would come out on these giant LEDs and greet people in the morning and make jokes and stuff about them. That was a lot of fun.”
As for how meeting planners can incorporate these three missing pieces, Cole says, “We are seeing a trend of more and more groups doing digital, which gives the overall meeting feel a more dynamic visual experience. But not only the visuals—we like to bring in music at registration, in the foyers, as well as breakouts and ballrooms. Music and visualization are the biggest things a client can do to complement an overall meeting ‘experience.’”
Working on a Tight Timeframe
Cole says the biggest challenge is that Quest usually doesn’t solidify its event’s theme till Feb. 1, so the company doesn’t always know how much revenue is available for a Mar. 1 meeting, a result which typically gives them a short window to create the event. “We put the whole thing together in a matter of three weeks,” he says. “We had about 20 people working full-time on it for three weeks to get it done. Everything from the mic flag to the desks and the furniture, and even the host. We were sharing mood boards about the host and what he could wear and what kind of wardrobe he would have.”
Read More: How to Design Memorable Experiences
Cole says the typical build type his company works with is at least a couple of months. “But we do so many shows a year that, as long as we have a dedicated team, we’re able to produce an entire conference in three weeks’ time. A lot of people think we’re crazy by taking that on, but, you know, we just got really good at it. I have really talented team members that really are exceptional. When we all work together on one project, things happen really fast.”
