How the Berlin Wall became the motif of a successfully divided Sydney event

Last Friday night, the 2020 B&T Awards were held in front of hundreds of guests in a hybrid event setting.

The annual awards ceremony – which is put on by The Nibbler’s sister publication, B&T – honours the best of the best across Australia’s advertising, marketing and media sectors.

We caught up with Vivian Luo, head of digital and events at The Misfits Media Company (owner of B&T), to find out how she and her team made it all happen…

How many people attended this year’s B&T Awards?

We had close to 600 in-person attendees, as well as over 200 live streamers, many of whom held viewing parties with their teams.

Why did you choose the Hordern Pavilion as the event venue?

The Hordern Pavilion is an iconic Sydney venue, centrally located and accessible by a range of transport options.

We booked the venue before the COVID pandemic, with the plan to host up to 900 in-person attendees, which is easily achievable at the Hordern.

With our company motto being ‘Stand Out’, we’re always looking at ways to do things differently. The Hordern offered us a blank canvas due to its sheer size and versatility in terms of room layout, so it’s ideal for us to push the envelope with our production.

What was the biggest challenge in executing the B&T Awards this year, and how did you reimagine the event accordingly?

The biggest challenge was to proceed with an event that was inclusive for the whole industry, without placing unnecessary health risks on our attendees.

We went above and beyond our obligations on the COVID safety front – we had a team of 20 looking after registration, whereby each attendee was temperature scanned, double-checked in (via a COVID contact tracing form and by scanning in their ticket).

Physical distancing was enforced via floor decals and physical barriers, as well as on-site COVID marshall.

We faced huge uncertainties with the ever-changing government restrictions, which meant that the final leg of planning and product was happening a lot later in the game.

In fact, it was about 14 days before event day that we made the final decision to split the room and the entire team everyone from events production, AV, catering, venue, security, RSA, and cleaners – into two. We effectively ran two events concurrently by two separate teams.

Together with the venue, AV and catering teams, we reviewed the government legislation with a fine-tooth comb and came to the agreement that it was within the limits of the current restrictions to allow more than one event to take place at the venue, if said venue contains more than one event space.

The question then became: how do we create two rooms? The most obvious choice was to use heavy black drapes, but we saw that as a huge missed opportunity to use the divider as an extra canvas for our theme.

Our creative for the event has been 80s inspired, so the symbol of the Berlin Wall became our motif for the divider.

While we didn’t want to rely heavily on stereotypical cultural symbols of the East and West, we created a colourful design, dotted with witty references and objects which made the perfect backdrop for the rooms and was hugely popular for guest photos.

The wall was printed onto a 35-by-six-metre fabrics and took a team of 10 to install on the day. We also added subtle hints via floral design, table theming, and music curation for the winners’ walk-up music to tie into the East/West theme.

The stage was the only shared element between the two rooms. We had our MCs, Craig Reucassel and Chris Taylor from The Chaser, each stationed on one side of the stage.

With manned cameras on both rooms, we showed our MCs on the oversized split screens so that they appeared side-by-side for the audience.

We also created a winners’ podium for winners to accept their trophies from our hazmat suit-wearing trophy presenters, without having to step onto the stage and risk cross-contamination between the two rooms.

For those based interstate, it was not possible for them to attend in person. So, we made the event available via an interactive live stream, whereby attendees can chat amongst each other and we showed an aggregate of all the social chatter.

We also crossed over to those hosting viewing parties in New Zealand, Victoria, Queensland, and the Northern Territory throughout the event to further engage the virtual audience. Those interactions were also well received by the in-room attendees.

What advice do you have for other business event planners in the current environment?

Think outside of the box – this is the time to execute your crazy ideas.

Keep both the in-person and at-home audience in mind in your planning. They have been experiencing all aspects of their lives via a screen this year – think about what you can do to break out of that screen.

The health and safety of your team and crew, as well as attendees, is paramount, so don’t cut corners on this aspect.

And have great partners for all aspects of the project. Trust in each other’s expertise and creativity.