Corporate · approx. 2020 · 2 min read

OREO 100th Birthday at Empress Tower: an office floor staged as the venue

OREO's hundredth birthday was celebrated for internal staff and office guests inside Empress Tower, with the working floor itself turned into the event space.

Guests: ~100
Duration: 1 session
Location: Vietnam (Empress Tower)
Audience: Internal staff and office guests.
Services provided: Decoration concept design, staging the internal event space.

The objective was straightforward: celebrate the OREO brand's hundredth birthday. The audience was internal staff and office guests, around 100 people. The venue was the company's own space at Empress Tower rather than a hired hall.

That venue choice is the whole design problem. An office is not a venue, it has fixed desks, working sightlines, a lift lobby and people trying to do their jobs. The recorded scope reflects it precisely: decoration concept design, and staging the internal event space.

What went in was a pirate ship installed across the open-plan floor, a costumed host team and a gift programme delivered desk to desk. A single large installation gives an office floor a centre it does not naturally have, and the costumed team moves the atmosphere into rooms the installation cannot reach.

Delivering gifts desk to desk rather than from a table is a deliberate mechanic. An office celebration competes with the working day and loses whenever it requires people to stop and walk somewhere. Bringing the celebration to the desk removes the decision to attend.

Nothing commercial is recorded against this one, and that is consistent with the brief. There is no reach figure and no sales objective in the entry, only the birthday and the internal audience. Internal events are judged on whether the building felt different that day.

Questions we ask afterwards

What was the single problem this event was hired to solve?: The objective is one line with nothing commercial attached: celebrate the OREO brand's hundredth birthday, for internal staff and office guests. The problem was therefore a venue problem rather than a message problem, because the celebration had to happen in the company's own space at Empress Tower rather than in a hired room. An office has fixed desks, working sightlines and people trying to finish their day.
What could a room do here that a video, a mailer or a showroom could not?: A centenary sent as a film is a message about the brand, whereas a floor that looks different when people arrive is an experience of it. The recorded scope was decoration concept design and staging the internal event space, which is another way of saying the building itself was the deliverable. Nothing in a mailer changes what the room feels like at nine in the morning, and for an internal celebration that is the entire effect being bought.
What changed between the first concept and the version that was actually built?: No concept drafts are held for this project. What is recorded is the built version: a pirate ship installed across the open-plan floor, a costumed host team, and gifts delivered desk to desk. In an occupied office the element most likely to move between concept and build is the footprint of the main installation, because every square metre it occupies is a square metre someone works in.
Which element took the longest to get right, and what made it difficult?: The record does not time the work, so this is judgement. The installation is the demanding element in an office, since a structure large enough to give an open-plan floor a centre still has to clear escape routes, sprinkler lines and lift lobbies, and it has to go in around furniture that stays where it is. A hall lets a set be designed first and fitted second; an office reverses that order.
What was the hardest constraint on site — venue, load-in window, power, weather, permits or something else?: Our record names Empress Tower and one session, with no site notes attached. The structural constraint of an office event is that the venue does not close, because the floor is a workplace before, during and often after the session, and the building's own rules on goods lift access, permitted working hours and floor loading belong to the tower rather than to the event. Load-in on a working floor is usually the tightest part of that.
How were guests moved through the space, and what happened at the tightest point in the flow?: No flow record for the session is held. The mechanic that is recorded runs the other way, since gifts were delivered desk to desk rather than collected from a table, which removes the need to move anyone at all. That is deliberate on an office format, because a celebration that requires people to stop work and walk somewhere loses everyone who is mid-task, and around 100 people arriving at one table is the queue it avoids.
What was measured afterwards, and what did the numbers say?: The only figure recorded is around 100 staff and office guests. No reach number, no sales objective and no follow-up measure appears against this event in either source, which is consistent with a brief naming only the birthday and an internal audience. Internal celebrations of this kind rarely carry a number that means much, and attaching one afterwards would not improve the record.
If the same brief arrived tomorrow, what would be done differently?: Less would be moved and more would be reached. The desk-to-desk mechanic is the part of this event designed around the building rather than against it, and on the same brief we would extend that principle to the rest of the programme, with smaller interventions at more points on the floor rather than one large installation the floor has to accommodate. We would also agree the load-in window with the building before the concept is drawn, since in an occupied tower that window decides what can be built at all.