Wasserman: experiential agency off-site

Half past one, and everyone has just moved seats to sit next to someone new. The brief goes up: it's 2041, and an airline wants to be the first choice for families. Each person gets a plain sheet of paper, folds it into eight and has eight minutes to fill it. The hosts move between the tables, helping anyone whose folding has gone wrong.

The challenge

Wasserman's experiential marketing team makes around 60 brand activations a year, and every project starts with a run of brainstorms. By the time we met them, the team hadn't been together in person for nearly two years, and 28 of its 73 people had joined that year.

So the day had two jobs. One was to give people a reason to talk to colleagues they had only met on Zoom, before the dinner and drinks that evening. The other was the work itself. When we asked whether the problem was finding new trends or using them, the answer was both: nobody had the time to spot what mattered, let alone work out how to bring it into a brief.

Fotografiska New York at night: a lit-up neo-Gothic building on the corner of Park Avenue South and East 22nd Street — **The venue.** Fotografiska, the photography museum on Park Avenue South, New York.

What the day had to leave people with

Ideas from the wider worldA habit of noticing what is going on outside work, and a way to bring it into the work.
Concepts, fastPractice at turning a brief into rough ideas and a prototype in minutes.
Each otherTime working with colleagues they hadn't worked with yet, across creative, client services and production.

What we built

Sixteen days from yes to the day. The venue was Fotografiska, the photography museum on Park Avenue South, with the team in the Loft on the sixth floor and the galleries open to them for half an hour. We walked the space six days before, then took the first design to the client's creative and production leads, so the day would work for all three departments in the room.

The space set the tables. Thirteen tables of six would have been too tight, so it became nine tables of eight, which also suited the afternoon: eight people split cleanly into two teams of four.

The morning was about noticing. The hosts put trends, hype cycles and a few old ideas in new clothes on the screen, then sent everyone out to look for their own. These are pages from the deck we sent the team afterwards.

A cellar of oak barrels in low light, with the words New Wine, Old Oak. — **New Wine, Old Oak.** Plenty of new trends are an old habit with a new tool.

The Gartner hype cycle: technologies plotted on a curve from the innovation trigger up to a peak of inflated expectations, down a trough and up to a plateau. — **The hype cycle.** Pairs mapped their own trends onto the curve on worksheets at each table.

A roll of Kodak film behind the words: Misunderstanding motivations cost Kodak $8bn. It wasn't about preserving memories. It was about a desire to communicate. — **Motivations, not gadgets.** Spotting a trend means seeing what people want, not what they buy.

A slide headed Describe usual things in unusual ways, asking how else you could describe brushing your teeth, going shopping at Target or a trip on the NYC subway. — **Make the familiar strange.** How else would you describe a trip on the subway?

A slide suggesting an Artist Date as a way to find inspiration, beside the cover of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. — **An Artist Date.** Thirty minutes alone in the galleries, looking at whatever caught your eye.

A bright yellow slide: Wow. This yellow is bright! Sorry about that. We'll get the LED screen turned down next time. — **The last page.** The venue's screen was brighter than we'd planned, and the front row told us so.

One idea in particular stuck. As one person wrote afterwards: “One thing that really stuck for me was the ‘old oak new wine’ idea.”

Inside the day

One day · 10am to 4pm, Fotografiska New York

Question MingleQuick-fire questions on sticky notes, then up and meeting people around the floor
Trend spottingHype cycles, mapped in pairs on worksheets
Artist DateAlone in the galleries, then five minutes solo and five at the table on what they noticed
LunchWith a community service activity for a local nonprofit
The 2041 briefNew seats, eight ideas in eight minutes, a remix, and a wildcard
PitchesThree minutes each and three of questions, then one intention to take back to the office

The morning started on its feet. Question Mingle had everyone write quick, curious questions on sticky notes and go and ask them of people they didn't know yet. Then the trends session, with a worksheet for every pair to map trends of their own on the hype cycle.

After a short break came the Artist Date. Everyone left the Loft and went out into the galleries alone for half an hour: sit in front of one photograph, put headphones on, walk the whole building. There was no wrong way to do it. Back upstairs, five minutes on their own with what they'd noticed, then five minutes comparing notes with their table.

The afternoon was the brief. Each person sketched eight ideas, so every team of four started with 32. They voted for two, then built them out in pairs. A couple of minutes in, the hosts stopped everyone and dealt a wildcard: Virgil Abloh, the designer, and his design principles, which every idea now had to use.

Step 1 · 8 minutesEight ideas eachOne sheet of paper folded into eight, one idea in each box.
Step 2 · 25 minutesVote, then remixEach team of four picks two ideas and builds them out in pairs. Then the wildcard.
Step 3 · 30 minutesOne idea per tableThe two teams at each table swap ideas and keep one. Twenty minutes to make it look like something.
Step 4 · 30 minutesNine pitchesTwo presenters per table, both people who don't usually lead pitches, to two other tables and two hosts.

Slide listing seven principles of a personal design language, from readymade to speaking to the tourist and the purist — The wildcard: Abloh's seven principles, as he gave them in a 2017 lecture.

What shifted

68 of the 73 filled in the survey before they left. All 68 said the day met their expectations. They rated it 8.8 out of 10, with an NPS of +56, and gave the hosts 9.3.

The team's executive creative director put it in an email to the colleague who had organized the day: “The organized activity was absolutely the right balance of interesting, engaging and not too much ‘work’.”

“The best work-sponsored training I’ve been a part of. Absolutely excellent.”
“I had no expectations coming into today. When I realized this was a workshop my expectations were low but I’m blown away. This was so much fun and I loved the way it made me think & helped me grow as a creative.”
“I took a photo of Virgil’s 7 design principles and I plan to frame it in my house & keep at my desk. I think these principles can be used throughout life in a lot of ways.”
“The entire program was super engaging and I didn’t feel bored at any point.”

What we'd change

The survey asked what to do better, and people told us. The screen was too bright for the front row. Several wanted more time for their own ideas and fewer small-group steps before the pitch. And the ideas were a little flat on the future: the brief said 2041, but we didn't push it hard enough. Next time, one step comes out of the pitch build, the year gets pushed harder, and there are a few minutes at the end on how people worked together, not only what they made.

What happened next

The deck went to the team after the day. The clearest signal came the following year, when another team at Wasserman got in touch through our website: the person who had organized the first day had passed on our name. That became a second off-site, on Governors Island. How that one ran →