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DWP Integrate Corporate Aims at Urban Music Festival – with Theatre
As sponsors of this year’s Urban Music Festival, Nokia’s marketing team wanted to back up performances from artists including Will Smith, Faith Evans and Craig David, and create a complete Urban Street Environment alongside the main music arena in which to showcase their latest products. Having come up with an ambitious idea, the company’s representatives, Haygarth, brought in business communications and project management experts The Dobson White Partnership.
“The brief was to create two Nokia ‘Zones’ within a 750 sq metre area inside Earls Court,” says DWP’s Gary White. “We worked with our award winning designer, Rob Taylor, to create full 3D visuals and ‘flythrough’, to enable the client to see from all angles exactly what the set would look like, catering for all corporate requirements such as extensive branding opportunities.”
For the ‘Urban Street Zone’ DWP sectioned and built a road area with burnt out cars, graffiti covered brick walls, phone boxes and street lights, a basketball court where pro-players demonstrated their skills, a Diner ‘serving’ phones instead of food, and a steelwork Garage ‘chill-out’ area with sofas where Nokia’s latest fashion phones were displayed. All props were genuine and an ‘at dusk’ effect was achieved with a scanachrome ‘sky’ Las Vegas style ceiling and generic industrial lighting cleverly highlighted with theatrical effect, created by lighting designer Nick Jones.
Health and safety was paramount on the project, as street jumpers Parkour provided hourly displays within the area. With crowds cordoned off they utilised the full set, jumping off phone boxes, through ‘abandoned’ car windows, leaping up the ‘garage’ drain pipes and back flipping over barriers. Their requirements had to be considered from initial design stages through to the intricate finishes on the build.
DWP’s Gary White has a diploma in Safety Management with the British Safety Council and is a member of the International Institute of Risk & Safety Management, which proved invaluable when planning the set design, structure and crowd management implementations. The result was “Parkour Heaven” in the words of Parkour’s Co-ordinator, EZ.
In the ‘Tube Station Zone’ concert goers experienced the latest games on Nokia’s N-Gage handset, whilst relaxing in the train carriage itself. This area too oozed realism, complete with train, passenger platform and custom built Nokia branded ticket machines.
“Several challenges faced getting a genuine 20 tonne, 52 feet long tube train in and out of Earls Court,” explained Gary, “…and this was the first time anyone had tried! Once we’d sourced it from Men at Work we found a limited space of 1.4 metres between venue columns, which proved a major headache. In addition, in the area which we needed to put the train the ground wasn’t as strong as other parts of the building and it was just too heavy. We contacted Robin Elias from Unusual Rigging, who weighed the tube independently rather than taking the plated weight for granted. They then designed a custom-built support mechanism to put under the rear axle which allowed us to distribute the load over a wider area. Within a day we had approval which allowed us to get the train in. In our minds, no matter what, we were going to find a way to make it happen. Often when someone says no people accept it. We don’t.”
DWP were given just three weeks from approval of visuals to show day, and with a very tight load in of a working 24 hours for a detailed build, the team had to pre-build and wire as much of the set as possible. Stage Electrics were contractors for all scenic elements and electrics on the project, requiring 27 carpenters and 10 electricians. Attention to detail here too was remarkable.
“DWP asked if we could have manhole covers in the street area for effect,” explained Stage Electrics’ Lee Unwin. We decided to then use these as access points for cable management and termination purposes, which worked brilliantly.”
“When we saw the set we were gob smacked,” said Haygarth’s Richard Kirk. “It’s the attention to detail, the scale of this, the time it’s been put together in and the quality of workmanship - the professionalism just shines through. DWP haven’t just walked us through it, they’ve driven us here.
“What we were looking to achieve is pure brand awareness. Nokia wanted to be seen to position themselves into certain target areas, and music is a main market. You don’t want to look like the big corporate giant at these events, but friendly and accessible, hip and trendy. This has fitted perfectly."
2nd August 2005
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