Challenge

In a screen-intense world, meaningful connections are the foundation for a successful business and sustainable future. This was front of mind when HSBC challenged us to design and deliver their Cities of the Future Event in Paris, creating a platform that gave them the chance to enable, connect, empower and free the world’s Future Citizens to unlock their potential to succeed. 

Insights

To do this we began by asking ourselves: What makes a Future City?

Is it technological advancements that improve infrastructure and amenities?

Is it harnessing data to becoming more efficient and sustainable?

For us, the future of cities was really about: Enabling and empowering Future Citizens to create meaningful connections with each other and their cities

Strategy

So, if that’s the case, we needed to think of our event as a concentrated future city?

A micro-ecosystem where businesses, technology and data all converge.

With customers and key players as ‘Future Citizens’ at the centre of the ecosystem.

And HSBC as the intelligent enabler that connects all the different aspects of the ecosystem together.

Solution

But, if our experience was a metaphorical future city, it needed to be ‘smart’. A space that allowed our Future Citizens to affect and be positively affected by their surroundings and to connect to other citizens and commercial opportunities.

By doing this we could ensure that every customer, or key player attending this event will leave feeling ‘smarter’ and better connected. And attributed this feeling to HSBC. 

And so, the concept of ‘Smarter Connections’ was born. 

We created an immersive, connected environment – a reflection of the smart ecosystem, containing inspirational demos, places to meet, relax, connect, learn, eat and drink.

And built in an intelligent comms solution using the Klik system, that allowed us to connect the citizens with plenary content, speakers, demos, HSBC and of course each other, from the minute they received the invite, and reaching way past the event itself. 

This event positioned HSBC as the facilitators of collaboration and the enablers of innovation. Connecting Future Citizens to their Future Cities. And made them both smarter for the experience.

My Role

Creative Director – Creative Strategy, Ideation, Concept development, creative direction of a team of designers, artworkers and producers.