(Industry)
Agriculture
Creative Direction
Brand Identity
Art Direction
Turning a client event into a confrontation.
[Situation]
01
Most agency events are a thank-you card with a keynote. Flatter the client roster, book a speaker nobody argues with, hand out a tote bag. Bader Rutter's Innovation Experience brought 150 marketing executives to Chicago each year, and the 2016 edition had to be bigger than the one before while landing with two audiences at once: clients who had been coming for years, and new ones deciding whether the agency was worth their time. Playing it safe would have worked fine. It also would have been forgettable, which is the one thing an event about innovation cannot be.
[Solution]
02
The concept was Change or Die, and it was built to make people uncomfortable. Dark, aggressive, closer to a thriller than a conference, and a hard departure from the years before it. An agency telling its own clients to change or die is a risk, and that tension is what made it work. I developed the concept, then acted as creative director, art director, designer and editor across all of it alongside a copywriter. Identity, title and stage films, environmental graphics through an industrial space on Chicago's west side, printed program, invitation, website, badges, and an installation where attendees wrote down the change they wanted to make. Clients responded well enough that the following year got built bigger, and went on to win the ANA Global ACE Award for proprietary event marketing.
