On air / Behind the scenes
National Retail Awards · 2020–2021
The show had to go on. Twice.
Two virtual awards galas, a mountain of care boxes and one barefoot woman who was too afraid to leave her camera mark.
- Disciplines
- Events / Creative Production / Leadership
- My role
- Event concept, creative direction, programming, hosting, creative production and overall event management.
- The team
- National Retail Association team.
- 2020 planning & development
- Retail Global. Planning and development support for 2020 only.
- Audiovisual supplier · both years
- Visual Domain.
Some things are worth celebrating, even in a pandemic.
In 2020, while much of Australia was adjusting to working from home, frontline retail workers didn't have that luxury. They were still turning up, navigating changing restrictions, dealing with uncertainty and keeping essential goods and services available to their communities.
The National Retail Awards had always been an opportunity to recognise the people and businesses doing extraordinary things in retail. That year, it felt more important than ever. We knew we had to continue. It would have been heartbreaking not to celebrate them, particularly after everything they'd been through.
The problem, of course, was that our usual gala wasn't going to happen. So I started workshopping how we could make an awards night feel like an actual gala when everyone was attending from home.
Bringing the gala home | 2020
I kept coming back to the things that make an awards night special. The anticipation, the entertainment, dressing up, enjoying food and drinks together, and getting to stand in front of your peers and accept recognition for something you've worked incredibly hard for.
A livestream could announce the winners, but I wanted to preserve as much of the occasion as possible.
Working with Retail Global, the National Retail Association team and Visual Domain, our audiovisual supplier, we brought together a live, two-hour awards experience. The programme included keynote appearances from Dominique Lamb, Senator Michaelia Cash and futurist Steve Sammartino, interactive retail trivia hosted by Klarna's Francine Ereira, and live winner announcements.
Behind
the scenes.
We also sent everyone who RSVP'd a care box and a lunch voucher so they could enjoy a little of the gala experience at home. Packing and preparing the boxes became an all-hands NRA effort. Lawyers, advocates, educators and the wider team spent an afternoon getting everything ready for labelling and shipping. The whole shebang.
On air.
And then we did it again | 2021
We had every intention of returning to an in-person gala in 2021, with a booking at The Star on the Gold Coast. Then, about a month out, another COVID wave made the situation too uncertain to proceed as planned.
The venue costs weren't returned, which meant we had precisely zero budget left to produce another virtual gala. And about a month to figure it out.
Lovely.
We couldn't recreate all the extravagance of 2020, and this time we didn't have Retail Global involved in the planning. But we did have the experience of having done it before, Visual Domain as our audiovisual supplier, and a whole lot of heart.
We brought in Turia Pitt and Colleen Callander to record segments for the programme, and I took on the video collateral and creative production myself. I was designing assets and madly turning around video edits in Adobe Premiere Pro, doing whatever needed to be done to pull the whole thing together.
There wasn't the time or money to make it as elaborate as the previous year, but that didn't mean the people being recognised deserved any less of a celebration. We concentrated on what we could deliver, made the most of what we had and got another virtual National Retail Awards across the line.
Looking back, I'm particularly proud of that second year. There was no spare budget to throw at problems and very little room to manoeuvre, but we still managed to create an occasion that recognised people who deserved it.
Sometimes you have to make the thing with the resources you've actually got. Even when those resources are Adobe Premiere Pro, a looming deadline and an unreasonable amount of determination.
On air / 2021
From the
finished broadcast.
The bit that stays with me
I still go back and watch the winners' videos on YouTube. There is something about seeing people genuinely moved by being recognised, particularly people who had been through so much and probably hadn't had many opportunities to stop and celebrate what they'd achieved.
Those speeches still make me swell with pride.
When I think about that first event, I remember standing there in my white dress, champagne nearby, barefoot and glued to my camera mark. After all the workshopping, coordination, packing, rehearsals and very careful standing still, we had somehow managed to make a virtual awards ceremony feel like a proper occasion.
The Zoom call ended, and I just stood there thinking, Wow.
Watch the ceremonies
Full ceremony
2020 National Retail Awards
Watch the 2020 ceremony (opens on YouTube in a new tab)Full ceremony
2021 National Retail Awards
Watch the 2021 ceremony (opens on YouTube in a new tab)Selected moments & source timestamps
- 2020 · Live winner acceptance · 08:29 (opens in a new tab)
Manrags, Sustainability Champion of the Year.
- 2021 · Opening title sequence · 02:05 (opens in a new tab)
An 18-second excerpt of the original animated event identity.
- 2021 · Winner reveal · 15:02 (opens in a new tab)
Sustainability Champion of the Year award sequence.
- 2021 · Finalist typography · 1:39:36
