How do you show gratitude to outstanding workers in a way that pleases rather than peeves? Generous gift cards? Long group lunches? Cold hard cash? Such generic tokens of appreciation might work for some businesses, but when Amway Corp. started planning its 60th anniversary celebration, it sought a uniquely individualized way to exalt the very people who made the company's singular success possible.

Launched in 1959, Amway (short for "American Way") is the 42nd largest privately held company in the United States, according to Forbes magazine. What really sets the company apart from others, though, is that it depends not on direct employees but on a legion of what are called Amway business owners (ABOs). These self-employed entrepreneurs, who operate in locales all over the globe, typically purchase any of nearly 450 products – ranging from acne lotions and air purifiers to shears and scouring pads – before selling them in turn to their own customers.

In addition to celebrating these superstars, Amway wanted to introduce its new CEO, debut a number of products, and position the company as every bit as cutting edge as the next-generation iPhone. "The most challenging aspect of this event was to create an experience that would be unique, culturally on point, and meet global business objectives for a sophisticated audience that hails from around the world," says Erin Warnock, director of business development at Chicago-based Wilson Dow Group Inc., the event agency that helped design and produce the celebration.

The ABCs of ABOs
Amway's preparation for the elaborate 2019 fete – which it christened the "A60 Celebration" (A60) – began almost two full years ahead of time. Wilson Dow started by conducting deep-dive research into Amway's potential guests: ABOs who had reached the company's so-called Diamond pin level and above (the other echelons included emerald, ruby, sapphire, and more such precious-stone statuses), which meant they were the highest performers on the planet for the qualifying year of 2018. Surveying hundreds from the créme de la créme of commerce revealed a slew of different personas, behavioral drivers, and diverse tastes that in turn effected a gauntlet of challenges almost as long as Amway's product catalogue. Ultimately, the data Wilson Dow unearthed drove much of the event itself.
First, it found close to 95 percent of this A-list audience routinely attended various Amway recognition events in glamorous locales such as Jackson Hole, WY, and Florence, Italy. Knowing it had to match those locations for superlative activities and visual je ne sais quoi, Amway chose to hold A60 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, a city that is more a theme park of uncommon experiences and hyperbolic architecture. The research also uncovered that attendees' musical tastes could overload Billboard magazine's charts. Accordingly, Amway booked more than 257 performers for A60, a staggering lineup that included Celine Dion and Lady Gaga.

Further increasing the company's particular challenge was the ABOs' distinctive, even defining, individuality. The research formally underscored what anecdotally was always believed about ABOs: They saw themselves not as worker bees indistinguishable from each other but as individuals as singular as a bespoke suit. Recognizing thousands of attendees as separate entities if they hailed from just one country would be a colossal enough undertaking, but Amway would be inviting ABOs from 48 countries covering 23 languages. Whatever ways in which Amway celebrated them, the attendees would have to feel these acts of appreciation were aimed at them individually with the accuracy of a laser beam.

Technical Knockout
The first items developed to ensure that attendees received personal recognition were the A60 event app and event badges. A highly customizable guide that included navigation and social-media-sharing abilities, the app could be personalized by attendees with their pre-event activity selections. And upon checking in at the event, each ABO would also receive a Bluetooth-enabled smart badge on his or her event lanyard that would automatically activate personalized interactive experiences throughout A60. The badges would communicate with the same database and algorithms underlying the A60 app, enabling them to trigger a variety of surprise experiences targeting guests by name, pin level, and individual schedule.
Second, interactive digital displays set throughout the venue would automatically recognize attendees, greet them, and make suggestions or offer reminders in a United Nations' worth of languages: Chinese, Korean, English, Russian, Hindi, and many more. Third, a variety of augmented-reality (AR) experiences would immerse guests in Amway products both contemporary and imminent. Additionally, a massive "Recognition Wall," as it was dubbed, would hail all visitors as if they were the sole guest of honor. Finally, Amway would host a dinner party for the best of the best, the highest-ranking ABOs in the audience of already high performers, where projection mapping would add a marvelous visual touch.

Amway keeps many measurable marketing objectives confidential, but it did disclose several that it would use as a barometer to gauge whether or not the event had engaged guests. Given that the pre-event survey of – and general institutional knowledge about – older ABOs showed many were reluctant adopters of technology, Amway hoped that 50 percent of attendees would download the app, and that those who did would use it at least half a dozen times over the course of A60. Further, it wanted to see roughly 65 percent of guests engage with the Recognition Wall. With its strategy and logistics painstakingly mapped out and executed over a nearly two-year period, Amway sent out email invitations to roughly 3,500 ABOs in January of 2019, inviting them to the weeklong event in May.

Magicians of Recognition
The moment A60 opened in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, guests immediately encountered the sophisticated technology with which Amway sought to impress them. Attendees using the app began experiencing a constant flow of curated content that included their made-to-order agendas, alerts about events, and personalized seating assignments for upcoming dinners. The app also offered reminders of activities users had signed up for, and a photo stream showcased images taken by fellow ABOs during the event.

Attendees stepping onto the show floor may have felt as feted as any movie star traipsing the red carpet at the Oscars. The Recognition Wall, a 48-foot digital display, detected guests' presence from 50 feet away via their smart badges and displayed up to 200 ABOs' head shots at a time as they cruised by. If they subsequently tapped their badges at any of the 15 nearby check-in stations, the 1-by-1-foot photos on the wall ballooned into larger pop-ups listing the attendees' names and home countries in their native languages. The enlarged pictures also proved to be tempting selfie opportunities few could resist.

No matter where guests went, it was as if an invisible concierge of silicon watched over them with salutations, reminders, and suggestions. Ten strategically placed monitors around the show floor would "wake up" the moment attendees walked within a few feet and offer the ABOs any of 30 personalized messages in their own languages. If an ABO scanned his or her smart badge at an adjacent Bluetooth reader, the screen pulled the title, location, start time, and map of the next item on the individual's agenda.

Another crucial goal of Amway's was to instill excitement in attendees about its current and impending products. So in the area designated the Brand Expo Experience, Amway offered a 30,000-square-foot space to promote and unveil these items. For example, one of the five activations was dedicated to the new line of Artistry skincare masks, which are divvied into purple-, yellow-, red-, white-, and green-hued versions, with each color linked to a particular benefit. One surreal specimen was the area promoting the green Artistry mask, whose chief function is hydration. In a space resembling an enchanted forest, two snow-white bathtubs stood amid thousands of loose leaves piled on the floor. Guests climbed into the tubs and then tossed heaps of the scattered leaves over themselves, the combination of lush flora and bathtubs suggesting how the mask moisturizes the face.

The Brand Expo Experience also contained five AR activations that allowed guests to virtually put Amway products through their paces. At one area for beauty products, attendees applied AR makeup to their on-screen reflections via a monitor that featured more than 150 different lipsticks, eye shadows, and other cosmetics. Their Bluetooth-enabled smart badges (powered, again, by the underlying database and algorithms) connected with the screen, captured the image, and then shot a Quick Response (QR) code to their phones that they could use to upload the photo to social media or cast it into the app's photo stream.

Placed in the center of the Brand Expo space was the Digital Drawing Wall, where ABOs were encouraged to help crowdsource the Amway that would come to be. Here, a series of iPad stands set up in front of a 36-foot-long, mosaic-like LED wall flashed an on-screen prompt to "Draw Amway's future." Guests then expressed hundreds of their visions of what a future Amway might look like, including everything from a sketch depicting the company offering CBD-infused gummies to a hopeful portrayal of an A70 bash taking place in Singapore 10 years later. The whimsical drawings then showed up in real time in the middle of the LED wall, giving participants yet another opportunity to snap and share photos.

Eat Your Heart Out
Many events often possess a climactic moment that, in effect, becomes the biggest, shiniest diamond in their tiara. For A60, the true standout occasion was a private dinner held on its second night. At the feast, Amway wined, dined, and lauded a select group of about 1,300 ABOs who had ascended to the very highest zenith of the company's aforementioned pin levels. Instead of relying on static decor and staid musical entertainment, Amway felt it needed something more appropriate to a seminal anniversary – something that would cross the boundary in guests' imaginations from the mainstream to the magical.

Early on in its preparations for the gala dinner, the company decided to employ projection mapping to transmit a highly individual video to each of the 1,000-plus place settings. While casually estimating the weight load of the necessary projectors and other logistical factors, Amway and Wilson Dow staff conversationally wondered if there was some kind of world record for projection mapping. Would this gala come close to it? Almost as a lark, Amway and Wilson Dow approached Guinness World Records Ltd. and learned that the projection-mapped dinner might turn out to be one for the record books.

Taking more than two years to produce from concept to execution, the dinner would ultimately include rigging 224 projectors and staging multiple days of rehearsals with Mandalay Bay's banquet team to ensure the 1,312 individual displays would be projected without a hiccup and set a Guinness World Record for the "Most Projection-Mapped Displays at a Single Venue." On the night of the banquet, once the elite ABOs were seated, the first customized animation welcomed them. Beginning with historical Amway footage and clips of past speeches, the projections morphed from the company's illustrious past to its sizzling present. The second story focused on the ceremonial pins that signify each ABO's individual achievement level. Diners saw a tiny metalsmith forging the commemorative pin in his shop, revealing the design for the first time. As the eccentric character polished the finished product, the projectors slowly dimmed as staff appeared and handed diners the exact physical versions of their pins, laying them directly over where the digital image had appeared seconds before. This touch left Corporate Event Awards judges as thoroughly captivated as attendees. "The technology at this event was incredible and engaging," said one judge. "The scale of projection mapping was off the charts and yet felt so personal."

Personal Effects
For all the dizzying range of activities, AR activations, walls that knew guests' names, and record-setting diners, the one continuing thread that braided the event and ABOs together was the focused technology that Amway used to both impress attendees and recognize them one by one. And the metrics prove that technology and personalization contributed to exceptional levels of engagement. Nearly nine out of 10 attendees downloaded the event app, a jump of almost 70 percent over Amway's initial goal. And those doing so opened it 12 times on average, a substantial doubling of the pre-event objective. Lastly, 98 percent of attendees engaged with the Recognition Wall, nearly 50 percent more than Amway anticipated. All the results established that ABOs had thoroughly submerged themselves in the world Amway built for them, where they were entertained as much as they were esteemed – a world that shined as bright with individual recognition as the glittering diamond pins the audience proudly wore. E