LPGA & Accenture Song

In Her Head

The LPGA is one of the premier professional athletic federations in the world and yet its players face amongst the greatest disparity in compensation and access to resources of any major sporting league.

While the vast majority of male golfers earn enough in annual endorsements to cover their full annual expenses, only the top 5% of female golfers enjoy such peace of mind. The remaining 95% rely on tour earnings to cover their costs of travel, accommodations, and golf equipment. Many athletes change caddies week to week. Some sleep on strangers’ couches before and during tournaments. Most are struggling to pay even basic living expenses. All take on these risks for the love of their sport.

To raise awareness for the unique challenges faced by LPGA athletes, Accenture Song created ‘IN HER HEAD,’ an immersive virtual and experiential installation that would debut at The Chevron Championship in April, the first women’s golf major of the season

Brand Design
Design
Experiential
Film And Video

01 THE ASK

Accenture Song tasked Early Spring to concept, design and build an immersive experiential installation that grounded and reinforced the transformative VR journey.

02 THE INSIGHT

Working in VR presents a unique challenge: Bridging users in the real world with a digital creation to create a deeper, lasting emotional impact.

03 THE SOLUTION

We designed a 3-part physical user journey employing detailed lighting design, trained, scripted actors as docents in curated golf attire and invited guests (2 at a time) to first enter a promising, overly optimistic entryway adorned with suspended clouds, elevator music and AI generated posters of inspirational messaging.

We then invite our guests into a privately draped environment inspired by the topography of golf greens using CNC fabrication using hundreds of pulsing, color-changing LED lights that set the stage for a promising experience to come…

When guests complete the headset experience, the lighting in the room has changed to better match the more profound mood and sentiment of the experience they just completed. Our docents are now more authentic, empathetic and provide a moment of decompression from the emotional experience before leading people into a final gallery exhibition that honors and celebrates the real LPGA heroes whose stores we just shared.

04 THE RESULT

Having transformed a seemingly perfect day on the course into a surreal, technicolor trip that provided room for reflection on the emotional impact of the message, ‘In Her Head’ was an official selection of the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival’s Tribeca X.

WELLFARE

A World Well Nourished

The pandemic has laid bare many of the cracks upon which this country is built, but few needs are more fundamental than our access to food. Food insecurity existed long before COVID-19, but has worsened and especially left low-income communities more vulnerable.

While food banks, pantries, and other community-supported programs work tirelessly to close the gap on food scarcity, it isn’t enough to cover the up to 8 billion meal shortfall America is projected to experience over the next year. And incase you missed it—we live in a country where 40 percent of our food is wasted, lost or simply thrown away.

Brand Design
Brand Strategy
Experiential
Social Content

01 THE ASK

Founder, Cole Riley came to Early Spring seeking support in solving the massive food insecurity problem the country faces.

02 THE INSIGHT

Barriers to accessing sufficient food are far too high for far too many, not only due to cost & availability but a lack of adequate education around nourishment and achievable health.

03 THE SOLUTION

Early Spring concepted and designed a non-profit, subscription food service for those in need called Wellfare. Wellfare will deliver nourishing food and drink to those who need it at low-to-no cost.

In parallel, Wellfare will produce relatable & insightful original content around what ‘health’ looks like, lifting the veil on ‘wellness’ & well-being. It will also help brands talk about the work they do with Wellfare in a meaningful way.

04 THE RESULT

The operational and creative chasm between the nonprofit world and the commercial world had to be traversed. Old-world nonprofits may have global reach, but they often fail to treat their beneficiaries with the dignity, the attention, and the care that companies show their consumers.

Early Spring imagined, instead, a nonprofit that does not ignore design, nor branding, nor quality, nor agility. A nonprofit that pays as much attention to the needs of its beneficiaries as companies do to the needs of their consumers. A nonprofit that recognizes that people in need are not just mouths to feed but people, consumers like the rest of us, who want to be healthy, fulfilled, and happy.