The Idea:

The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), Edmonton chapter, hosts an annual award ceremony to commemorate the exceptional work of its membership. 2020’s pandemic and restrictions provided challenges when it came to engaging, inspiring and awarding members without the benefit of an in-person event. As creative sponsors for the 2021 Capital Awards, my team was tasked to create a theme, awards format, and awareness social media campaign to bring members to the event. We were asked to provide creative solutions to the challenges of zoom fatigue and feelings of isolation, aiming to inspire members to both submit their work and participate in the online event. 

 Objectives for submissions included:  

• Submission goal: 45 

• Virtual tickets goal: 60 

• Virtual event attendance goal: 60 

To excite members the idea was to lean into the absurdity of even having an awards show online, giving a wink and a nod to the humour of the situation the world was in.

It was like the future predicted by tech theorists in the nineties — back when the discourse was of the “information superhighway,” and how much hype was made about the technologies we had to use by necessity by 2021.

Taking “online” back to the future, we designed a low-tech landing page, rad graphics and a sweet call for submissions video for education on the radical change in the annual ceremony.   

Further conceptual work included a guerilla marketing tactic to reach recurring submitters (even brazenly redesigning logos of invitee organizations in personalized invites) and content for social media, newsletters, direct email and blogs. A 90s hype machine flooded the client’s channels and by consulting on host selection for the event (a comedy improv troupe, Girl Brain) we ensured that the event was laced with nostalgic, absurdist comedy — from a call for submissions video to the night of the event.

The submission goal for the awards for this year was nearly doubled (83 submissions) and the virtual award show saw 94 virtual attendees out of a total of 107 tickets sold. Based on a post-event survey, a vast majority of attendees gave positive feedback to the theme, the event and execution.