CLIENT: Optus
TYPE: Corporate party
VENUE: Australian National Maritime Museum
WHEN: December 2016
ATTENDEES: 3,000
Herbert Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines once said, “Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your stakeholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows.”
Optus, a major telco in Australia, has a strong lifestyle culture. According to Andrew Parker, National Manager, Experience and Culture of Optus, the company is very much focused on health and well-being. Employees have access to gyms, childcare centres, bars and restaurants located at the university-styled Optus Campus in Sydney New South Wales (NSW); a site that caters to 7,000 employees. “The Optus NSW Christmas party is something that our company positions as part of our reputation for being a great place to work in. We define the experience of working at Optus as one of the things that sets us apart,” said Parker .
The Optus NSW Christmas party is an iconic event for the company that caters to 3,000 guests, and tickets are usually sold out within the same day of its release. It is an event where the company positions itself as being a great place to work. Optus acknowledged that it is a very competitive employment market, particularly in the technology sector. The Christmas party is something employees talked about during the recruitment process and even on the first day at work. The party is a point where the company’s devised workforce get together all in one place to celebrate everything they have achieved and have a really great time.
Andrew and his team have a daunting task of sourcing a unique venue that meets every criterion and high expectations of their diverse workforce. The venue must deliver a series of different experiences throughout the evening whilst keeping guests entertained. In 2016, the Australian National Maritime Museum was selected as the venue. The party was so successful that their event survey indicated that 97.1 percent of attendees had a good or great time at the party.
Grant Pisani, Managing Director of Fourth Wall – the Collective of Creators, produced and managed this event with Optus for several years. He said in an exclusive video interview with Biz Events Asia: “The Australian National Maritime Museum is a unique space. We were fairly sceptical because we didn’t know too much about it. When we were invited to come down here and had a look around, we knew immediately that it has so much potential. You walk down here (the venue) and the backdrop is the city. You have a submarine 10 metres out, you’ve got a ship just off to the right, and you have a lighthouse on the left, so we have so much potential and we want to use every part of that.”
Pisani started by embracing and leveraging on the venue’s nautical theme. His team started to think big and pushed creative boundaries. Pisani also ensured that all those involved fully understood the client’s and the agency’s creative vision and collaborative approach. With the trust of his client Optus, his agency called upon the creative services of Ignatius Jones of VIVID Sydney fame to orchestrate three show-stopper moments. Both Jones and Fourth Wall activated trusted performers and contractors and created an exceptional experience made up of 70 performers throughout the evening, 30 pyrotechnic effects and a variety of food and beverage stations at different parts of the venue by the venue’s caterer, Laissez-Faire.
Although it is a Federal Government cultural institution, the Australian National Maritime Museum’s flexibility regarding the needs of the business events industry saw several successes over the past two years. The museum welcomed 4,000 Nuskin incentive delegates from Greater China and another 4,000 from Amway China.
Deanna Varga, Assistant Director Commercial & Visitor Services at the museum said that not only can event professionals hire any of 12 of their venue spaces, they can also curate some form of experience which ties into an existing exhibition or something that is relevant to the delegates. Events can have a cocktail party and dinner event amongst some exhibits. Delegates may not be able to consume food and beverage within some exhibitions and the museum tries to accommodate by allocating a separate catering area before the guided tour so that the delegates’ experience is seamless.
Above the food and beverage, the museum created a cultural and educational experience at the party. According to Parker, the venue provided some unique opportunities like the guided tour of the HMAS Vampire battleship, which blew hundreds of employees who queued for that experience away. The tour was enhanced by characters on board as part of the entertainment and the lounge was set up as a spectacular sky bar.
Optus utilised the entire venue for the party; both indoors and out. Parker said, “One of the advantages of this venue was the opportunity to have 3,000 guests to simultaneously see the outdoor stage which allowed us to engage some of Sydney’s greatest theatrical performance talents who created some really show-stopper performances. We found that there are actually a lot of opportunities there, to have something iconic and by the water. Taking some of the best parts of Sydney in summer allowed us to have different experiences for different guests.” He added, “These large events bring our people together to connect and hopefully share ideas throughout the process.”
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