CENX Inc., Staff Appreciation Event

You have to love clients who want you to plan something competitive and creative for their annual staff event. This year for their event we created a customized scavenger hunt that took place at The Loft Board Game Lounge. The client asked that we keep the scavenger hunt in the building so we created tasks that included trivia questions, taking creative photographs and videos and locating specific items.

Staff started to arrive after they had finished their day at work ready for a fun team based evening. We created the teams as they arrived. Our very talented friend at Propmaster had created coloured game board pieces that would identify team members. We had large tokens for the team captains and each guest picked a mini token from the bag when they arrived that would tell them which team they were on.

This venue was interesting to work in with such a large group because it is two floors and we couldn’t fit everyone on one floor. Angie and I split up and gave event instructions on different floors before telling teams they could rip open their bags and get started. The teams moved between both floors to complete all their tasks.

The scavenger hunt tasks were all based on the venue and on board games. The Loft is such an incredible space. It is two floors full of pretty much every board you can think of and a few retro video games too! It is such a great place for group events and would be an amazing place for a date night! It is fun and they have great food.

I was so pleasantly surprised by the creativity of the participants. One of the tasks was to take a photo of three of the team members with a Bill. In my mind they would find someone by the name of Bill in the venue, assuming there was likely someone who worked for the client whose name was Bill or perhaps someone worked at the venue and was named Bill. Or, as a last resort they would run out on to the street and see if they could find a passerby named Bill. I found this scavenger hunt task on-line somewhere and they suggested that if someone took their photo with a dollar “bill” to give them half marks. We got lots of those as responses but my favorite had to be the team that found a photo of Bill Clinton on their phone and took a selfie with their team and the phone photo.

When event planners plan events we count heavily on our partners – our AV team, our venue – in this case I really counted on the expertise of our graphic designer, Luce Ends. Meredith was a critical part in making this event the success it was. Meredith knew exactly what I was envisioning and made it come to life, better than I dreamed it would be, as always. Meredith designed our name tags, scavenger hunt booklets and most importantly our champion trophy.

This year’s event was truly a team building activity. The staff were divided up amongst groups they don’t necessarily work with on a day to day basis and they had to work as a team in order to complete the tasks. The feeling in the event space was one of fun and excitement and friendly competition. It is always so rewarding to sit back and watch attendees at an event you planned having so much fun.

This event would not have been the success it was without the help of the great partners we had in creating it. A huge shout out to:

Venue: The Loft Board Game Lounge

Graphic Design: Luce Ends

Photography: BH Photography

Props: Propmaster