Post Office Retail Awards 2019

Highlights

Supporting Post Office’s most highly-anticipated event in the calendar,
recognising the successes of their top performing branches in the UK.

Background

Our team were proud to support the Post Office Retail Awards, which celebrates the hard work, community spirit and service excellence of teams and individuals in over 11,500 UK branches.

Location:

Birmingham

Sector:

Retail

Category:

Events

Objectives

Creativity was key as the Post Office wanted to put on a memorable event that brought both their brand and values to life, whilst making their finalists feel special. To represent Post Office’s values, the theme was set to reflect Culture and Diversity across Modern Britain.

The event venue also needed to be modern, as well as being the perfect place to celebrate over 400 finalists’ achievements.

To make the event memorable, our team not only designed an extra special delegate journey, they managed the following elements:

A fully branded delegate registration website.

Registration scanning technology for both a quicker and safer onsite solution.

End-to-end logistics and third-party partners.

Cost negotiation.

Event safety and risk assessments.

Live streaming of the event for those who weren’t in attendance.

Event branding, including the awards, external and internal event signage, award certificates and edible place cards, etc.

WOW. What can I say, but a huge thank you to you and your team. The night was amazing and everything came together. I’ve had nothing but positive feedback and some really lovely emails. Please thank all your team from all of us at Post Office. I look forward to catching up with you soon.

Event and Planning Manager, Communications Team, Post Office.

Solution

By challenging the status quo and applying our smarter working solution (this involves seeing where attendees are travelling from so we can place the event in the best possible location), we proposed taking the event out of London, making the Awards more regional, like the Post Office themselves. This ultimately saved Post Office 36% on rail and air compared to last year’s event, whilst providing a venue that ticked all the Post Office’s boxes: The Vox Conference Centre. This was a great, centrally located option, also positioned next to Resorts World in Birmingham, giving guests plenty of activity options pre and post-event.

As well as sourcing the venue, our team seamlessly designed the delegate experience to build momentum and excitement. This involved:

Developing the on-brand registration website for communication.

Designing and distributing high-quality, branded, gold foil invites.

A gold carpet to welcome the VIPs for the evening, who then experienced a slick bar-code registration solution.

Pre-dinner drinks and canapes in an elegant “street stall” setting, featuring cuisines from around the world.
A silhouette artist, who created white silhouettes of guests during pre-dinner drinks so they could have their very own giant “stamp” – just like Her Royal Majesty. Incredibly VIP.

A Scottish Piper leading guests from the pre-dinner drinks area to the main dinner, where the centre stage (inspired by the London Olympics 2012) was set to wow the guests. The “Opening Ceremony” also included Bhangra dancers and LED dancers too.

Goodie bags (containing an array of British foods) and a customised biscuit as a place name, greeted guests upon arrival at their place setting. The place name had been designed to look like an envelope with a stamp, with each finalist’s branch name on it, instead of an
address.

To keep the surprises coming, Strictly Come Dancing’s Tess Daly was the Star Host.

During the dinner and awards, an iPad magician (very modern indeed) roamed the floor.

One last surprise was the secret “after party” – this area included an LED dance floor and bar, dancing mixologists, a well-known band and even a bespoke cocktail menu with themed cocktails, such as “Track and Trace”, and “First Class” to name a couple…

Results

Overall, the event was a fantastic success, providing a great opportunity to meet and celebrate the exceptional retailers up and down our country, who deliver excellent customer service to their communities.