Bringing it all together in Hawaii
Rockwell Automation Australia
Brand Jam Case Study
The Background
Rockwell Automation is a global leader in industrial automation with offices all around the world. During 2020, the company was forced to transfer its three day Annual Sales Conference from in person to online following travel restrictions and lockdown requirements during the global covid19 pandemic. With over 150 international and national delegates due to attend across Australia, New Zealand and Asia, Rockwell Automation was looking for an interactive and fun team building event that would help reinforce their positive conference slogans of “Bringing It All Together” and “The Future Is Ours To Build” as well as create a fun activity for their group on the final day of the conference. As Rockwell Automation could not bring their delegates overseas they also decided to bring a flavour of travel to their conference, deciding an additional South Pacific theme to the event by encouraging delegates to add an element of Hawaii in their online presence.
Our Brand Jam task was to create a Branthem for the event that could be easily learned by the delegates, lead them in a performance together online – and produce both a video and audio production of their collaboration that they could view before the conference day end – all in the space of a few hours.
The Project
The entire project posed four key challenges.
Our first challenge was to know how this was going to come together musically – online. We created a pre-event registration form with strategically designed questions to help us gauge the level of musicianship within the group, as well as other important skills which would be needed across the group for a successful result – including leadership, communication and tech based knowledge.
Writing a Branthem in line with the theme was our second challenge, to tie in not just the dual themes of ‘bringing it all together’ and ‘the future is ours to build’ – but the Hawaiian theme which would be at the core of the event. The Branthem we created was called “E Hui Pu Nei” which translates loosely to ‘coming together’ and our lyrics reinforced the many parts which need to come together for success – both musically and across the departments in any organisation – and a focus on building towards a brighter future, to shine a light on Rockwell’s key conference themes.
Thirdly, as we were hosting our Brand Jam online with over 150 participants over Zoom, we had to have some solutions in place – to be able to facilitate breakout rooms and activities seamlessly; and secondly to be able to be able to create a music collaboration successfully within the latency restrictions of Zoom.
Our final challenge we faced was to be able to deliver all aspects of our task on time. To do this, our team strategically pre-produced many elements of the track prior to the conference to ensure efficient delivery and ease of learning for the group as well as the final audio-visual production.
ROCKWELL AUTOMATION 2020 ANNUAL SALES CONFERENCE
ASaved By The Bell" © 2018 D.Menzel (Branthem Creative) for Rockwell Automation Australia
ROCKWELL AUTOMATION 2020 ANNUAL SALES CONFERENCE
"E Hui Pu Nei" © 2018 D.Menzel (Branthem) for Rockwell Automation Australia
The Result
On the day itself, over 150 delegates from Rockwell showed up in true Hawaiian style, with tropical Zoom backgrounds, colourful leis, sunglasses and Panama hats. Many brought instruments with them - including guitars, xylophones, harmonicas, bongo drums, whistles, voices and their hula swaying hips. We began with an icebreaker of getting to know each other, and followed soon after with a video to outline their challenge before sending them off into breakout rooms to piece together their collaboration. The 150 delegates who connected before this event saw a new side of each other in our Brand Jam, a musical side that they had perhaps not seen or shared with each other, and their theme of E Hui Pu Nei - coming together, brought fun, colour and sound to a team that needed to come together in a most challenging year.
Virtual Brand Jam also was also winner of the 2020 Wyndham Pitch Competition.
Curious to see if a Branthem is the right strategy for you?
