The Brief:

Do you remember where you were in spring 2020? Sorry for that little jump scare, but it helps set the scene for this brief! Due to the constant threat of lockdowns and government orders to maintain social distancing, trade shows were universally cancelled. At Tricel, trade shows were a key feature of our yearly environment division marketing plan, so we needed to come up with an alternative…enter The Virtual Tradeshow!

The Target Audience:

Irish building professionals and homeowners wanting to discover wastewater treatment products for their homes/building projects.

My Role:

Initiated by Project Manager David, with 3D space and interactive product models supplied by an external agency, my role was to design all the remaining elements in the 3D space (logo, video creation, virtual signage, etc.) to make sure they were on brand, engage with the environment team to get feedback and sign off.

Key Challenges/Constraints:

As mentioned above everything was remote due to lockdown, so trying to grapple with new technology to create high-end outputs was a little challenging. As we were missing the ‘personal touch’ of an in-person tradeshow, it was very important to me that our video kiosks in The LAB would highlight ‘real’ Tricel people. I recruited JC, our technical advisor, to be our video spokesman. I wanted to include real footage of JC talking to camera, however, as we had no studio access available, we worked around this by recording his vocals over Zoom. I then layered these over video graphics in After Effects. This worked well and we followed a similar template when we customized The LAB for our UK audience.

With the easing of restrictions, Tricel has made a return to in-person trade shows, but the LAB is still operating and is a great training tool for new employees to learn about Tricel’s flagship products.