The Myer Christmas Parade was a grand annual parade through the streets of Melbourne with an average of 50,000 attendees. It was Myer’s gift to the people of Melbourne to build customer loyalty and goodwill, and signalled the start of the Christmas retail season.
Producing each parade was a mammoth task, taking over six months to complete each year. Working in close partnership with the National Events Team at Myer, our production team was responsible for strategic concept development, project management, media management, marketing, sponsorship, celebrity recruitment, technical production, community engagement and compliance. Additionally, we had the responsibility of managing enormous public event logistical challenges such as closing half of Melbourne CBD [including three major tram lines] for several hours.
Multiple stakeholder liaison was also a significant challenge that we conquered. We managed the involvement of all participants from an enormous list of household brand names to over 1,500 parade participants, including 1,000 community members who we curated and creatively directed in their performances.
The event was broadcast live in Victoria, and nationally on delay, on the Seven Network. We developed the broadcast concept, presented it to our contacts at the network and made the introduction between the parties. This was all while curating the successful ongoing relationship between Myer and Seven.
We were instrumental in engaging another major sponsor Audi, by creating a package that suited their objectives. Through our detailed discussions with Audi, we discovered that their one key requirement was not brand exposure on event day, but rather access to customer data. We created a sponsorship package to suit. They signed up right away.
