Delivering the prestigious Excellence Awards.

Delivering a prestigious corporate awards programme for our customer, a British aero-engine manufacturing company, to celebrate and recognise the hard work of their employees.

Similar to The Oscars, our customer’s Excellence Awards were a unique event for all of their employees, to celebrate and recognise those who had delivered extraordinary results whilst role-modelling their corporate behaviours. In previous years, the event has been part of a conference. This year, however, they wanted to create an independent event, exclusively for employee recognition.

Project management

Logistical support

Event live streamed around the world

Delegate registration

Delegate accommodation

Delegate transport

Creative theme and branding

On-site management

Silver service gala dinner

Whole host of entertainments

Objectives.

The main objective of the event was to make each and every person in the room feel special and proud to work for their employer. The rest of the event needed to fit around this aim and so the theme ‘it’s your time to shine’ was born. With a metallic and modern feel to the theme, we wanted to ensure that the look and feel of the event was oozing with a ‘forward-thinking’ and ‘pioneering’ atmosphere.

With guests arriving internationally, we wanted to ensure that our venue screamed classic Britishness! After shortlisting venues for the event, we put forward three venues to our customer. Their chosen venue was The Landmark London; a 5-star luxury hotel located in the heart of London. This was the perfect choice to host the event not only because of the stunning venue itself, but it being just a 30-second walk to Marylebone Train Station and Tube Stop and 8 minutes from Heathrow Express by taxi.

Solution.

With our specialist team among the best in the business, we worked closely with our customer to understand exactly what they wanted. From this we were able to show how we could pull together a personalised event. We took care of every aspect, including:

Delegate registration (pre-event)
Booking accommodation and transport for all guests
Accommodation – the first quote that we received was far beyond our customer’s budget, but after a few days of negotiating, our sales manager sat down with Melia and negotiated a good rate. We made sure we utilised different skills in the wider team.
iPads were used to ensure quick registration
We even made changes to the typical silver service to save time. For example, we already placed the bread rolls and drinks on the tables, rather than wait for the waiters to place napkins on each table.
We also assisted in moving the guests into different rooms to keep in line with the strict timings we had in place, e.g., moving the guests from the room in which the drinks reception was held, to the main room.

Our dedicated events manager, Daisy, brought a wealth of experience and creativity to the event planning. She recommended the best suppliers, negotiated very competitive rates, and managed all associated logistics. This is invaluable as it left me free to pick up the more strategic tasks.

Project Manager, Aero-engine manufacturing company

Results.

Every detail was thought out and built into the planning process to deliver this prestigious excellence awards, including:

Live streaming of the awards around the world – the challenge was to keep strict timings as people were eating courses in-between awards. So, we worked with the AV team and the venue so that the live stream didn’t go live before or after these intervals.
AV – we worked with Insight who is one of our preferred AV suppliers. They joined us on every site visit.
Live 3D printing of chocolate lollipops containing the company logo
We had an acrobatic mirror ball artist who opened the show.
Two iPad magicians also performed classic close-up magic but with a technological twist. For example, they would draw a ball on the iPad, and then extract a real-life ball from the screen. They also had the company logo appear on some of their tricks!
Song Division – A global provider of interactive musical experiences for meetings and events, created an event anthem to further support the idea that everybody in the room is special. They got the crowd involved by asking everybody to write a lyric, and then made 3 mini songs from them, which they performed at the drink’s reception.
Lick Me I’m Delicious – A company that provides experimental food installations for events, delivered a range of their contraptions to add an extra element of magic into the event.

The event was a huge success, and our personalised approach meant that the venue solution fell well within our customer’s budget and provided ease of access to their guests arriving internationally.