Imagine this: Your company is abuzz with excitement for an upcoming corporate event. But behind the scenes, the chaos of planning looms large. You want to create a memorable experience that aligns perfectly with your brand and culture, but the task seems overwhelming. But hey; that’s where we come in! Our team is dedicated to transforming ordinary events into extraordinary moments. We step in to ease the load, ensuring a smooth and tailored experience, from engaging themes to seamless execution, aligning with your company's values and objectives. Corporate events should be a perfect blend of business and conviviality, creating a dynamic setting for networking and celebration. Just like when we teamed up with Top Employers Institute for their annual certification gala and after-party. Their theme of the year, "The Art of Being A Top Employer”. Needless to say, we were intrigued. They envisioned a museum venue with art as the focal point, and we were captivated by their overarching theme and flexible vision. As we delved into their goals and purpose, a seamless collaboration was born.

The Venue

The playbook from Top Employers HQ outlined for us a vision for each portion of the event. For venues, they were looking for something in the range of concert halls, theaters and museums, and wanted to avoid the usual Corporate hotel go-to. Pairing this with the needs of an afternoon session, a significant range in guest counts up to 300 guests, and ability to host an after party, museums quickly went out the door with their limited venue rental windows allowed. Concert halls and theaters that fit the bill were already booked, consumed an enormous portion of the budget that would detract from the other goals, or we were second/third in line for date options and a clock that was ticking closer to the event date goal a little over 5 months away with guests traveling from around the world. We needed a location, date and time, asap!

Our team after tirelessly emailing and touring spaces decided one hotel was THE ideal space to host this event and crossed our fingers and toes that being a hotel would not automatically disqualify it because the history, location, amenities, decor and in-house team were PERFECT!

After a video meeting and pitching our top 3 options for their event, it was a unanimous decision that The Driskill Hotel was it (and we were THRILLED)!

With the venue secured, we moved onto the color palette and art theme of choice.

The Color Palette

The company colors and playbook colors outlined ruby red, sapphire blue, creams and metallic golds. To avoid feeling like a political USA party, we decided to fully embrace the shades of red, then focus on metallic gold and add in pops of blue.

The venues main event space had the most beautiful burgundy detailing that complimented the vibrant red hue we were focusing on in the vinyl wrapped stage, uplighting, florals, napkins and chargers. We decided to lean into the burgundy color for the table linens for dinner to add to the elegance and warmth of the gala, and then added in some pops of yellow and orange through the surrounding decor to compliment the cream and gold decor of The Driskill. We then carried over the blue in the stationery and branding elements.

The cocktail hour space is almost an entirely gold and blue designed room, with a heavy emphasis on gold and creams. We brought in the vibrant red through the linens, and focused pops of blue through branding moments in the signage.

The Art of Being A Top Employer: Music

The theme of the event was “The Art of Being A Top Employer”.

Art - Noun - the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power, and the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.

When Top Employers North America came to us with the theme of “The Art of Being A Top Employer” the ideas were limitless.
To be able to celebrate so many amazing companies by surrounding them with various forms of art is an event planners dream come true.
Being in the Music Capital of the World, we focused on music for our Austin Shindig, but wanted guests to feel they were surrounded by beauty and the various forms of creative art - from the venue architectural details, to floral design, live fashion sketch artists, edible food art, aerialists, electric violinists, dance performances, custom painted guitars, a red carpet grand entrance, the textures of the linens, the shapes of the chairs, the busts and custom floral glassware….everywhere you turned various forms of art were there to surprise and delight all the senses and truly bring the best of Austin to the Top Employers.

Guests were greeted with a branded photo-op, properly decorated with floral and bigger-than-life LED Electric Guitars. The speaker stage was blanked in velvet draping with red uplighting and the stage was completely wrapped in red matte vinyl with the companies logo perfectly front and center, and accented with artful floral designs. Speaker chairs were chosen in the given color palette and with silhouettes that had an architectural inspiration than just any given chair.

Custom made guitars with Texas music icons were painted and displayed throughout the space, including a gold painted guitar with the companies branding. As guests were welcomed into the cocktail space, a 14’ tall disco guitar was front and center, flanked by custom painted branded pillars to show guests to their designated table for the plated dinner.

The food experience is once that we value and know is a great way to be mindful of dollar spend, ROI and another place to carry over the theme of the event. Due to the expertise of The Driskill, the dietary restrictions of various guests coming from around the world, and the level of experience we wanted guests to have, we opted to have a plated meal where guests could place their order based on the pre-selected menu at the table, and timed the courses around the presentation and award ceremony of the evening. After enjoying plated meals, the fabulous pastry chef of the venue custom-crafted artful desserts, and custom family-style music-inspired chocolate towers complete with mini-mallets that guests could use to smash the chocolate with into bite-size pieces at their tables.

Once guests wrapped up dinner and awards, a second line kicked off the after-party along with party activators that helped corral and gather guests, and lead them to the after-party space where a Texas Music Montage dance performance kicked off the dance floor, before We Are The Nightowls took to the stage and had guests dancing until the very last minute (and quite literally asking us where and when the next event would be).

We couldn’t be more thankful to be reliving it all with Leslie’s creative eye and coveted shutter drag skills and 718 Creatives cinematic skills to help everyone see the beauty and joy all over again.