DELOITTE – ALL ABOARD FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

Inspired by the Christmas magic of train stations, we transformed a 10,000 m2 event pavilion into a giant train station. The design was based on the world’s most beautiful stations and named the Deloitte Grand Station: a place where everyone could connect and socialise. A space where every corner was carefully crafted and designed to provide a unique experience. After check-in the guests were challenged to explore, dream, and feel the Christmas spirit of the Deloitte Grand Station as they prepared for a great trip. A place full of magic, where everyone was surprised by different events. Music on every corner, porters handling luggage and dancing, shoe shiners who sang, paperboys who distributed newspapers announcing only positive news, people handing out sweets, ticket inspectors, a Kiss & Hug corner for photos, and restaurants with food and drinks. Bells rang out, and we were taken on a journey to 5 continents through a giant curved screen, 86 metres wide, which created an immersive effect using high-resolution multimedia content. On each continent, the train stopped to take in a show featuring more than 20 dancers representing one country from that continent. We hired a highly successful choreographer who made all the guests shimmy and dance, as a warm up, all the way to Lapland, where the trip ended with an artificial snow show, and a DJ show that played several hits from various countries on the trip back to Portugal.

The specificities of the event relate to the fact that an event was created with characteristics aligned with the motto of the client company. The theme, based on the idea of a place where we can all make a better future together, inspired all the Storytelling of the train journey through the different stations of the world that provide remarkable and unforgettable sensations and experiences. Unique train stations, unique choreographies and unique animations lingered in the memories of all the event’s participants. Because the performances and the multimedia content were unique and designed specifically for this event, which allowed us to recreate the trip and the locations in a very realistic and beautiful way. This provided participants with an even more striking experience.

Deloitte’s purpose and motto is to create a better future: “better futures together”. Hence the briefing: a unique Christmas party based on this concept, where together we can build a better future. As an agency, we believe that in order to create a better future we have to understand the world, and in order to understand the world we have to discover and experience the world. Therefore, we have created a storytelling event based on the magical universe of railways and the beauty of train stations, where we reinforced the concept of togetherness with “All Aboard”, taking everyone on a journey around the world. This concept inhabits a very rich visual and sensory universe that allowed us to create various activations and create a lot of content for the shows, ensuring participants’ entertainment and engagement for more than 8 consecutive hours by creating a memorable experience which featured extremely human diversity. An event created for an experience, for the fun and celebration of Christmas with eyes set on creating a better future. This proved to be a giant challenge for our agency, since we only had 2 days to set up the event in a space covering 10,000 m2. We used IMAX techniques to create multimedia content, which allowed us to recreate the journey and locations in a highly realistic way.

Deloitte is a fast-growing company in Portugal, and its strategy is to capture new talent while supporting the talented people it already employs. The company views its parties as a way of doing this, and so it seeks and requests a briefing that gives an overview of a unique and mind-blowing experience that will help it fulfil its objective. A good experience guarantees Deloitte’s position as a leading company where everyone wants to be. The Return On Experience (ROX) was enormous. According to internal surveys, the level of satisfaction exceeds 97%. A unique journey beginning at Deloitte Grand Station, an immersive Christmas celebration where a 10,000 m2 space was fully transformed to provide a magical experience, promising a one-of-a-kind night: a dazzling journey that captivated hearts, transcended borders and united everyone in the spirit of creating a better future.

This event is part of the internal communication and human resources strategy. Deloitte is a benchmark company in terms of capturing, retaining and supporting new talent, whose average age is around 30 years. These events help to create a spirit of unity, lock in knowledge, and transmit the company’s values. The event was announced on the company's internal communication channels, including an invitation for each employee, and also on the company's social media after the event had taken place, namely Instagram and LinkedIn.

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