The Power of Collaboration

By partnering with experts and creating solutions that draw from different disciplines, the power of collaboration enables us to deliver holistic, all-encompassing and effective brand experiences for our clients.

Pushing the limits

2019 marked the 6th year Neonormal have designed and produced the Renault F1 Central stand at AusGP, and we knew we had to do something special to raise the bar—especially after raising the F1 car in 2017…

This year we wanted it to move.

All of it. The F1 car, social content (aggregated from the hashtag #MakeTheMove), video supergraphics but most importantly, we wanted visitors on the stand to be moved.

Renault had announced their new partnership with Daniel Ricciardo and developed a national campaign enticing new car-buyers to “Make the move”, to Renault, as Daniel had done from Red Bull. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Renault Australia business, given Daniel Ricciardo’s worldwide popularity, but especially as the homegrown hero in the Australian market. A multi-channel strategic marketing eco-system was needed to leverage this moment in time to maximise every touchpoint, ensuring each action drove awareness, consideration, familiarity, purchase, and loyalty.

With their campaign and our intent aligned, the next step was to pull all the elements together—building an F1 experience to match the renewed confidence and excitement of Renault Australia and the global Renault F1 Team.

These elements included:

• A spatial plan that allowed for multiple driver appearances, signings and media stunts on the stand across the four days (on the biggest scale AusGP has ever seen)
• Traffic flow planning (considering dwell moments, game queueing, crowd control, etc)
• Viewer sight-lines and distances (both toward the stand and inside it)
• Sight-lines for vehicle and game optimisation during on-site driver appearances
• Brand ambassadors briefed on vehicle specifics and #MakeTheMove campaign initiatives
• Overhead structure build (a large framework that provided open space, large-scale branding opportunity, and fewer obstructions)
• Concealed lighting and sound sources above translucent ceiling scrim
• Environmental graphics (highlighting the F1 Team and promoting the VR experience)
• Dual LED corner superscreens (to align with static display banners)
• Dynamic lighting treatment to elevate the stand’s hero vehicle (while keeping it publicly accessible)
• Digital display stands for dynamic vehicle information (tailored to daylight and undercover viewing conditions)
• Updated VR Pitstop Challenge experience (including pitstop road markings doubling as player zones)

The Experience

We created a heightened stand position on the prime corner of the site, visible to nearly 100,000 visitors every day of the 4-day event, working with Harry the Hirer Productions to install dual 12m LED super-screens across this corner.

This LED super-screen created a dynamic content opportunity. So we set to work developing a content plan to showcase Renault’s vehicle lineup, live Renault fan engagement, F1 Team driver livery and chassis reveal, general announcements, and animated Renault brand moments.

To make this move, we worked with animator Don Lim, who cut his teeth on halftime shows at sporting events. Don took our storyboard and together we turned it into a dynamic loop of engaging video and supergraphics. The content was bolstered by collaborating with Renault’s above-the-line agencies (VI and Big Red), who provided social media imagery and vehicle TVCs—one of which was filmed on the fly with Daniel during the event. This aligned the launch of Renault’s #MakeTheMove national campaign across all screens, both in-home and at the event.

Inside the stand, we incorporated a VR Pitstop Challenge with an F1 chassis on display, weaving together a physical and digital experience not only for the gamer but the audience viewing the action in the stand. We designed bespoke floor and wall graphics to convey the F1 pitstop environment and technical aspects of the experience, collaborating with an international team of VR developers, fine-tuning the spatial requirements and meeting various safety standards.

Overall, it was a unified effort by the broader project team, juggling international time zones with global stakeholders and multiple production schedules to create a seamless experience.

More than just parts

Collaboration is about creating something bigger than what we can achieve alone. And this year—by calling on the talents of animators, VR technicians, film crews, and an AV production company—we were able to bring Renault’s F1 experience to life and also tie it into their broader content strategy, measuring the engagement in the process.

The keys to harnessing the power of collaboration? Clear communication of your goals and an open mind. Treating your suppliers as partners. Allowing the interplay of supplier disciplines to yield a holistic experience—the sum of which is so much greater than if they simply focus on their specific parts of the process.

And the results proved it — with over 12,000 passers-by drawn onto the stand, an average dwell time of more than 5 minutes, approximately 160 test-drive requests and over 800 games of the VR Pitstop Challenge played across the 4-day event.

View more of our recent projects here

By Dan Pike

Posted March 26, 2019

Dan blends his graphic, industrial and environmental design practices in surprising ways to create brilliant solutions for Neonormal. His sharp wit, unique perspective and obsession with type are on full display on Instagram.