Two Days in Times Square, 12 Creative Months in the Making
A behind-the-scenes look at the creative that went into ONWARD19, the Yext user conference.
This posting expresses the views and opinions of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yext and its affiliates, employees, officers, directors or representatives.
It’s crazy to think what a small but mighty in-house creative team can do in the middle of Times Square. Perhaps take part in a flash mob, or enjoy a matinee of Dear Evan Hansen — or take over the New York Marriott Marquis to put on a 2-day conference for over 1,600 attendees. For us, it was the latter.
Here’s a little sneak peek as to how a handful of creatives got the job done.
The Conference
This October marked the fourth consecutive year for the annual Yext user conference, ONWARD. More than 1,600 attendees from a broad range of industries came to learn about the shift in consumer search habits. Attendees came away with a greater understanding of how to answer the questions that begin the customer journey, and actionable strategies for meeting consumers where they search. ONWARD has grown immensely in the last couple of years and this year it’s been rated one of the top Must-Attend Marketing Conferences. But what really captured the creative team’s pride was the praise from attendees noting the bold branding overhaul of every inch of the event, the creative attention to detail, and one attendee’s direct quote,
“Man, they really did the marketing up right this year!”
It’s an event that our global Marketing team (in which our brand creative team — The Creative Studio — sits) works towards all year long. In fact, before ONWARD19 had even begun we were working on the ONWARD20 landing page. Every ONWARD has been a feat, but 2019 was our greatest yet. We’ve moved on to a larger footprint that allowed us to literally brand everything from the escalators to the cappuccinos.
What follows is the brand design team’s behind-the-scenes look at the year leading up to our proudest ONWARD to date, and our biggest creative undertaking thus far.
12 Months Out: Website
In November 2018 we started building the ONWARD19 landing page — earlier than ever before — that would soon turn into a fully fleshed-out website to collect registrations and be a source of truth for all things ONWARD. Initially, this website was an extension of the ONWARD18 branding as we were still months away from having unique ONWARD19 branding.
11 Months Out: Debriefs and a Site Visit
At the ONWARD18 debriefing, the team discussed everything from what worked well to not so well. We looked at, and brainstormed, big-picture ideas for ONWARD19 and the year ahead. It was exciting to plan for the next event and even more exciting now that we had a significantly larger canvas to work with. After these meetings wrapped, we set out for our first site visit at the Times Square Marriott Marquis. We used this visit to familiarize ourselves with the venue: It was important for us to get to know the space and its nuances before we began ideating what would fill it.
7 Months Out: Rebrand
We overhauled the Yext brand, inside and out.
In early spring, our brand design team undertook another massive project — rebranding and repositioning the company. With the natural evolution of our platform, and exciting new products in the pipeline, the time was right to reimagine the positioning of the company, as well as our visual branding.
We worked in tandem with other teams within the Marketing Department to drive the new brand messaging and develop this new aesthetic. After several months of iterating and collaboration, we had arrived at a place that both visually and viscerally represented Yext and our new mission: Perfect Answers Everywhere™.
Sure, rebranding a public company is exciting, but the daunting part comes after the rebrand is approved and the design of every asset and sub-brand needs to be updated. ONWARD19 already had its own visual identity that was very much in-line with the now-outdated Yext brand system. In early summer, we set out to update the look-and-feel of ONWARD to utilize the same visual language as the new Yext. The rebrand was a huge moment for the company and — as our largest event of the year — ONWARD was a major part of that. We needed to create a flexible and scalable brand system which could stand on its own, but at the same time align with our corporate branding.
For the first time, we removed the Yext logo from the ONWARD logo. ONWARD has built a name for itself so it no longer needs to be part of a lockup. We also took this opportunity to update the font to Gilroy (the new brand font) and simplify the logo by reducing the amount of overlap in the letters so it is clearly legible in its new color palette, black and white.
6 Months Out: Second Site Visit
The purpose of our second site visit was to start to determine the function of each part of the event space — where registration would go, where to put the swag store, the Innovation Hall, the configuration of the Executive Business Center, and more. Our event production partner EMP joined us at this stage to advise on logistics, attendee flow, and furniture options. We began to walk ourselves through the space imagining how we hoped to see it during the event itself. On the heels of our rebrand, it became very evident that rather than embellishing the decades-old interior design and color palette, our mission needed to be to try and tame it. We needed to introduce some order and space to the outdated and visually dense interior design.
5 Months Out: Rebuilding the Website
Out with the old, in with the new. Much of the early summer was spent planning and designing the reskin of onward19.com. The challenge was to design a website that spoke the new visual language while showcasing our star-studded speaker lineup and exciting new product announcements while staying true to the ONWARD brand that our return guests would resonate with. In contrast to years past, we developed a very clean and light visual style. Instead of relying on heavy color overlays we simplified everything to solid colors — black and white, with just a splash of the pastel brand colors — and the use of the blueprint, which is an abstract representation of the Yext logo. It was a design element that we used to represent the theme, “The Future of Search’’, and that we are laying the foundation and giving our clients the tools to build a better brand presence for themselves in the digital universe. This blueprint was a very intentional choice to connect ONWARD and Yext more than just the existence of logos on the website.
3 Months Out: Planning Part Two
Over the course of the summer, our focus shifted from the website to the on-site environmental experience. Consulting with our Event Marketing team, and working with EMP on the architectural aspects of the interior design, we extended the ultra-clean aesthetic of the website to the environmental space. As we had previously recognized — the key was to introduce some air and some calm to the space visually, and it was exciting to focus in on the specific details of this idea as we went on more rounds of site visits, met with the printers, and began pulling specs of all the columns, signage, doors, and floorplans so we could start building out all of our files.
At the same time, we were also planning the livestream, customer activations, social engagement elements, and our Innovation Hall (the space dedicated to sponsor booths, Yext Product Experience Zone, Hitchhikers booth, and swag store).
2 Months Out: Opening Keynote Planning Begins
To open up every ONWARD, our Founder & CEO, Howard Lerman takes to the stage to welcome our guests and share exciting new updates about the company and our products. At ONWARD18 his keynote involved a musical performance with Broadway actors. We knew we had to do something just as captivating for ONWARD19 (as I write this I realize we now have to compete with ourselves year after year to one-up our own ideas…). This year, we took the audience inside the studios of the fictitious “Yext Broadcast Network” to participate in the recording of two live TV Shows: Truth Be Told with Howard Lerman — a late-night style talk show where Howard introduced our revolutionary new search product, Answers, and discussed the current state and potential future of the Search Industry, and The Answers Challenge — a modern game show designed to demonstrate the power of Answers
The production of this keynote was a tight collaboration between Howard, our Chief Brand Officer, Josh Grau, and our Creative Director, Owen Fegan. It involved the concepting and writing of the scripts for both Truth be Told and The Answers Challenge, creating individual branding and virtual “sets” for both shows which included hundreds of visual and audio cues, and casting actors for the various roles in the game show. (Todd Munion, the central character of our latest ad campaign The Man Without the Answers also made a cameo appearance).
Like any in-house creative team, we had many projects going on outside of ONWARD. One that was taking shape during this same timeframe was the Hitchhikers program, Yext’s new training platform and community that is launching early next year. It was an entirely new initiative for the company, so everything needed to be created from scratch: the branding, a landing page, swag, a launch video, and a booth design that was featured in the Innovation Hall at ONWARD. Alex Felsenstein, Associate Creative Director, was lead designer for the Hitchhikers program and spearheaded all the design work needed for its launch. She collaborated with Jay Sheets, Senior Video Producer, on the launch video, and EMP on the amazing booth set-up.
6 Weeks Out: RFID + Swag Store
We made the decision early on to gamify the entire conference. We decided to not only use RFID wristbands (ONWARD-branded, of course), but also gamify the whole experience so that the more guests engaged with the conference, the more points they could earn.
Our first ever swag store boasted 10 unique items to choose from — a combination of various apparel, tech products, travel goods, and a water bottle. It was during this period of time that we got rounds and rounds of samples and customized each of these items to our exact liking.
4 Weeks Out: The Big Stuff
The larger the graphic, the larger the production time. Because we had so many meetings and proposals earlier on in the process, when it came time to execute the process was fairly seamless.
I used this week to design the 45 column wraps, 3 registration booths, 82 glass clings, and 6 massive vinyl wall graphics.
It was great to have these large scale graphics out the door and in the printers hands, but the heavy lifting was still to come.
The big stuff didn’t only apply to printed graphics. We were also working hard on video content during this time, as well. Jay was managing product announcement videos, Hitchhiker video editing and booth content, Product Experience Zone content, evening bash videos, and an animation for a digital billboard in Times Square. The billboard was a big moment for us to promote our brand image, messaging, and the ONWARD livestream. This 30 second animation showcased Yext and ONWARD19 to a massive audience beyond just our attendees (video below).
3 Weeks Out: Last Round of Site Visits
It was finally beginning to feel like progress was being made. We had our final round of site visits with the internal stakeholders. These visits were a way for me to walk through the space with each of my colleagues — all focused on executing different elements of the conference — and discuss how we were going to bring to life our visions in just a few short weeks.
2 Weeks Out: Print Deadlines
We had a very strict print deadline to meet this year and there was no room for negotiation. So, this week was dedicated to all things print graphics. While the larger graphics were done, we still had 102 door vinyls, dozens of room headers, wayfinding, and much more to do. Millie, Graphic Designer (with a focus on event marketing support), really owned these elements. She was in charge of handling all of these graphics, plus things like vinyl decals for bathroom mirrors and custom ONWARD pillows.
The ONWARD evening bash conversations have also been going on in the background of all the other work going towards the main conference. Each year we put on a closing celebration for our attendees to network and let loose after many hours worth of digesting content. This year, we took over the PlayStation Theater and had Gavin DeGraw put on a private concert, which was incredible. However, before we could celebrate, we needed to make it look just as amazing as the Marriott Marquis. We skinned 4 full bars, 2 massive walls, stair railings, escalators, multiple pillar wraps, 3-D logos for the stage, video content, and of course, more door vinyls. Although the scale of these designs were quite large, the graphics were all consistent with main conference branding so execution was trouble-free.
1 Week Out: Digital, Digital, Digital
We left our last week in the office to finalize all things digital. Fortunately, Millie had completed any pre-event social images prior to this moment in time, so the entire brand design team was all hands on deck making title slides, session screens, livestream screens, and the animated walk-ons and walk-offs for any speaker on the mainstage. We also had over 20 iPosters (digital signage) on site this year that replaced dozens of freestanding, printed meterboards. They were great. We were able to cycle through various images on each, which allowed us to communicate multiple messages and show multiple graphics. This helped us communicate with attendees where lunch was being held, when they should be heading to the ballroom for the closing keynote, and many other messages. They did come with some challenges and things to learn for next year, such as adjusting the color for brightness levels and planning for the limited pixel density, which made smaller agenda text difficult to read. But overall, they were a great new addition to our conference and contributed to our mission of producing a high-tech conference.
Before wrapping up all the final touches at the office and heading out to the venue for the installation, we created an on-site master plan for our team. Alex and I worked together to make sure the entire team, including ourselves, had clear directions so we’d all know what to expect throughout the event. We treated it like an assembly line of sorts.
Alex served as the gatekeeper for any and all creative requests that came in and either handled them herself or assigned to the appropriate person. Tyler, Senior Graphic Designer, was one of our photographers and I assigned him sessions to attend to capture speakers on stage, audience shots, and much more to use for immediate social media needs. Over the years we’ve been able to get by with just Tyler and one Getty photographer, but because of the increase in venue size and content, we had to call in a third photographer (Brooke) at the last minute to help out the second day.
After each session, Tyler and Brooke would hand over the camera cards to Christos, Art Director, who downloaded everything and filed images accordingly. He’d also go in and retouch the really strong ones so we could use them for more immediate purposes. That’s where Millie comes in — she was handling all of the live social imagery. In addition to having someone go around the conference with an iPhone to take live videos and photos, we had a preplanned strategy of on-site image requests to post on our various channels. Over the two days Millie made 39 social images for the content team.
Jay was capturing footage of the entire event, from keynote sessions to people mingling and drinking coffee. His priority was to capture the “wow” moments that will help us promote the scale and scene. There is so much hard effort that goes into producing this event and we need Jay to make sure it’s all captured from the eyes of the attendees. As if that alone wasn’t enough to do, Jay also managed the video and lighting needs for our first ever broadcast booth.
Owen’s focus was making sure the mainstage keynote went off without a hitch.
Lastly, I was on standby to handle any and all “fire drills”. These are those anticipated needs that can’t really be planned for. There are always last-minute things that need to be handled behind the scenes — like finding a frame for a small table top sign that we had forgotten to send to print, or dealing with the AV and production team not having the proper files 10 minutes before someone takes the stage. Although there is no telling how crazy these requests might be, it helped to have one person dedicated to them so the rest of the team could focus on their assigned objectives.
Creating this master plan really helped us be as organized and efficient as possible.
3 Days Out: Install Begins
A year’s worth of work comes to life and anxiety ensues. I started to second-guess my designs and I was meticulously watching the installers’ every move to make sure our hours/days/months worth of labor is coming to life as it was intended.
Bonus fire drill: There were a handful of graphics that needed to be redone because we were given the wrong specs. While I was managing install, Millie was working on getting these new files to print.
1 Day Out: Install Wraps, Rehearsals Begin
While the installation process is coming to a close, our executives and opening keynote production team join us on site to go through rehearsals.
20 Hours ’til Doors Open
As briefly mentioned before, a really nice perk of hosting the conference in Times Square is the ability to utilize the billboard that’s featured right across the street. It was great that we were able to take advantage of this and make a big branding moment splash, even better that Jay caught the whole thing on video.
12 Hours ’til Doors Open
Some final tweaks were being made to the keynote, which meant some last-minute prep with the production team. These were the late night hours spent fine-tuning files, adjusting image displays and making a show out of content. Most of us didn’t sleep this night.
We were all running on adrenaline, seeking perfection, excited about showing our creation to the world.
I always feel oddly calm the night before a big event. It’s like all the stress I felt leading up to this moment is suddenly released and what will be, will be.
6 Hours ’til Doors Open
It’s this moment when we realized all the small details that were forgotten over the weeks of preparation. Name tags for the game-show segment, camera signs for the talk-show segment. Various slides for various sessions. Nothing major, but nevertheless, urgent needs. Quick designs at 7am that got rushed to the on-site printer at 8am for our 9am rehearsal. Hopefully it all seemed glamorous and smooth to outsiders, but usually there are crazy things going on behind the scenes to make it all come together.
5 Hours ’til Doors Open
Our Command Center (a room reserved for the marketing and IT teams to make sure all the details go off successfully) is filling in with the rest of the marketing team — the creative team, the social team, the PR team, the content team, and our hired photographers and videographers.
Doors Open
I actually don’t even remember where I was during this moment in time. We’re all exhausted, proud, overwhelmed yet calm, and it wasn’t until I looked down at my watch to realize that the time has come for people to start checking in at registration.
Over the next two days, we all worked together to make sure the entire event went as smoothly as possible. From photography, to social media support, to managing CEO keynotes and presentations, it was an honest team contribution. The growing creative team has been a blessing in many ways, but having this group of rockstar individuals helped make this years ONWARD my proudest to date.
In Conclusion
Throughout the entire year, our other marketing teams were writing content, dealing with venue logistics, sourcing speakers, securing sponsorships, and so much more. You know the cliché line “it takes a village”? Well, ONWARD truly does. We partner with so many teams across the entire organization to help us produce this amazing event each year and I realize how wonderful it is to have teammates that appreciate ONWARD the same way that I do.
It’s also so wonderful to see how much this experiential design was appreciated by the attendees, too. Overhearing someone say “man, they really did the marketing up right this year” or the venue staff tell us that no other company has ever taken over their space like we did gives me such a feeling of satisfaction and pride. Our hard work meant something: it transcended beyond just the creative eye into an amazing experience.
The work put in to ONWARD is gratifying as it is because we know it’s such a public facing event.
Often times, no matter how public, a designer is the only one to notice their work. Having people really experience it, be immersed in it, and actually notice it is a real reward.
So what does a scrappy, satisfied design team do hot off the heels of the success of their biggest annual conference to date? First, we caught up on lots of missed sleep. Then got started on ONWARD20, of course. Sign up for updates and we will see you next year!
