The Drum Awards for Experience: who’ll claim gold for Event Production of the Year?

These awards celebrate the very best activations, but also the teams, technologies and venues that made them successful, with the Event Production of the Year category judged on how entrants went above and beyond to create an outstanding experience for clients and helped their vision come to life.

Collaborate Global for Sky Cinema and Goodwood Revival

Building upon previous activations for Sky Cinema and Goodwood Revival, Collaborate Global created a 1950s-inspired theatrical production that invited festival attendees to come and join the action at the annual Goodwood Revival festival 2021 in a converted aircraft hangar.

With actors, dancers, a live band and moving stages, this highly-immersive event went beyond the usual ‘sit back and enjoy the show’ message – to quite literally keep people on their toes.

From a brief humble beginning three years prior for Collaborate Global to simply ‘show cars in a film by displaying them in this hanger,’ the agency has worked with both Sky and Goodwood to turn what was a simple concept into a truly immersive activation, which is now the go-to favorite for both the Goodwood team and the guests at the festival.

The event brought a 20% increase in total visitors, with an increase in engagement time beyond the 10-minute target. Over 95% of visitors engaged and interacted with the activation and the event was one of the highest-rated activations within Goodwood.

Bearded Kitten for Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station sits at the heart of one of central London’s largest, most visionary and eagerly anticipated new developments, which will see this vast site – which has been derelict for over 30 years – transformed into a new destination for London, offering homes, shops, cafes, offices and 19 acres of public space.

Ahead of the public launch of Battersea Power Station, Bearded Kitten directed and produced a private opening ceremony for key stakeholders involved with the project. This one-night-only event was the first event to take place in Battersea Power Station’s Turbine Halls in decades. Collaborating with some of the best in the industry, it celebrated the heritage, history and future of this building with a powerful, never-seen-before spectacle mixing performances from aerialists, dancers, free runners and Arcadia’s Lords of Lightning, accompanied by pyrotechnics and incredible lighting effects.

In a true celebration of the space, this evolving spectacle played with perspective and scale to fully showcase the building, floor to ceiling, culminating in a finale with a human mirrorball and epic custom music score.

XYZ and Hotel Creative for Gucci

Gucci celebrated its centenary in the heart of East London, engaging agencies XYZ and Hotel to deliver an interactive brand house that touched every sense.

Running from October to December 2021, Gucci Circolo Shoreditch invited patrons to immerse themselves into a multi-dimensional activation that was a fusion of a luxury boutique, intimate Gucci Café, hand-crafted bookstore and immersive Listening Lounge. Entry to the space was by appointment only, transporting visitors into a celebration of the iconic Gucci style across three distinct phases. Visitors were also given the opportunity to explore and purchase the ‘Gucci100,’ a special one-off collection designed by the creative director of Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele.

The chameleon-like space evolved to reflect the eclectic inspirations that help Gucci remain one of the world’s foremost fashion houses, creating a compelling immersive experience to celebrate Gucci’s 100th year.

The project generated significant positive coverage across both traditional media and social, including spots in British GQ and Dazed. Gucci Circolo Shoreditch played host to over 5,500 visitors, with over 1,500 sales appointments booked with the team. In terms of indirect experience, it generated over 17.5m impressions and created over 35k engagements through paid media. Via social media it garnered over €4.5m in equivalent media value, logging 2.1m engagements and 18 million followers. As a direct result of the fashion showcase, over 1,500 new client prospects were created.

TRO for BMW UK

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2022 saw BMW celebrate 50 years of its Motorsport division BMW M by taking on the honored marque for the festival. On such a monumental year for the brand, TRO was tasked with ensuring that BMW was the most-talked-about brand at the festival, with the added challenge of creating an engaging environment that strengthened desirability for the brand during a time when production costs were soaring.

The 50 years of BMW M celebration experiences encompassed two separate sites – BMW M at Trackside and BMW i at Stable Yard – which, combined, welcomed over 116,000 attendees across the four-day event. Both locations housed a breadth of thrilling and entertaining moments, such as the unveiling of the first-ever BMW M3 Competition Touring (which was also a world premiere streamed worldwide), the UK’s first look at the XM and i-Vision concept vehicles, and crowd-drawing beatbox performances.

Not only did TRO smash all of the KPIs set for them, including increasing sales leads by 16% and contacts by 49% in 2021, showcasing an increase in desirability for the brand, but they also helped contribute to social impressions reaching over 10m. In addition to this, 80% of total visitors shared their experience on the stand on social media, and BMW topped all other car brands for SOV online and for the gross reach of media.

Blast Premier Fall Final 2021 Copenhagen

After 20 months of remote and online-only esports events due to the ongoing pandemic, fans had been crying out for in-person interaction and entertainment with their favorite teams and star players.

At the end of last year, Denmark and Blast welcomed back crowds and in-person esports arena events for the first time in two years. The result was a record 25,000 fans across three days of action-packed Counter-Strike in Copenhagen’s iconic Royal Arena venue, which was broadcast all over the world. UK-based company Blast hosted eight of the world’s biggest esports organizations and its brightest stars to fight it out over five days of Counter-Strike, with a combined prize pool of $425,000 on the line along with the crown of the world’s greatest CS:GO team.

The event reached 25,000 fans across three days, hit a Blast record and was one of the best-attended esports events in Danish history with 861,383 global concurrent peak viewership on Blast-owned channels. Media exposure brought 2.5m reach in media value, with 1,800 pieces of coverage, and the event saw 20 international and regional media outlets in attendance.

For more information about the awards and how you can attend/watch the results, head over to the dedicated site.