A dynamic festival experience blending live and virtual elements—and elevating attendee engagement.
This leading insurance company’s annual 'FOCUS' sales leadership meeting aims to inspire, inform, and energize their team every year. After three consecutive years as their production partner, DH was tasked with taking engagement for the 2023 edition to a new level. We built a festival-inspired event space complete with fun, creative elements including a re-tooled The Masked Singer competition and a fully customized virtual meeting platform. The outcome was exactly what we anticipated: high energy, elevated connection, and over 161k recorded attendee interactions through the event platform.
"The overall program was outstanding, and Jesse Itzler was the perfect motivational speaker. I know how complex it is to plan these events and I want to thank you for making it all look flawless. You are all superstars."
It was imperative for the client team to make this year’s FOCUS a monumental one for 1,000 in-person attendees and approximately 5,000 virtual participants—spanning everyone from sales leaders to senior executives. To accomplish this, their goal was developing an end-to-end event journey that energized and united all attendees with the Aflac culture. For DH, a recurring creative challenge was working within the familiar FOCUS theme and brand; while useful for reusing signage and quick design turnarounds, it required some innovative thinking to guarantee each year’s experience would be fresh, yet indelible.
Our team didn’t just create a meeting theme or a campaign—we created a cultural moment. Tasked with a “go big” mandate, we transformed FOCUS into ‘FOCUS Fest,’ drawing inspiration from SXSW and the Texas vibe. The meeting tagline, ‘TURN IT UP,’ embodied our strategy of raising the bar on both engagement and energy. We curated a full festival experience with music, exposed trusses, and photo ops to immerse attendees the moment they walked through the entrance; interactive booths, large-scale signage, and live performances brought the space to life as a true festival.
For the remote audience, we developed a custom meeting interface for tuning into the main general session stream, joining selected breakouts, and accessing agenda assets tailored to their individual roles and sectors. This setup supported 17 attendee groups and enabled us to track every interaction and engagement over three full days of programming, in addition to post-meeting.
FOCUS Fest opened with DJ Will Gill energizing attendees as they entered the ballroom, showcasing a 100-foot-wide stage with a transparent LED screen—behind which the DJ was positioned—and embellished with vibrant lighting. We began with playing a “pre-opening” video, bringing the audience behind the scenes with a time-lapse of the set build and festival journey. It ended with the doors at the back of the ballroom opening, transitioning seamlessly into a live shot of the in-person audience, helping ensure the virtual audience felt connected right from the start. For the “official” opening video, in collaboration with Aflac’s video team, we developed scripts and storyboards, provided research, and directed video shoots, while their team handled all editing—a prime example of how we play well in the sandbox. Engagement continued with a welcome festival featuring a live stream of the College Football Playoff National Championship; other activities such as cornhole and lasso lessons were available throughout the meeting space. We also selected the motivational keynote speaker, Jesse Itzler, whom the clients later dubbed “the best speaker in Aflac event history."
2023 Summit Creative Awards (SCAs) – Silver Award: "Integrated Campaign - B2B"
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