Tag: Design

A DREAME HOLIDAY

Making Home Tech Feel Like Home

Dreame, a home technology brand, needed to stand out in the highly competitive holiday gift guide season. With multiple tech brands vying for media attention and consumer dollars during this crucial retail period, traditional product demonstrations and press events risked getting lost in the seasonal noise.

  • Brand Design
  • Brand Positioning
  • Brand Strategy
  • Design
  • Experiential
  • Experiential Retail
  • Influencer
  • Social Content

01 THE ASK

Create an engaging press and influencer event that would position Dreame’s products as must-have holiday items and secure placement in holiday gift guides. The event needed to showcase the products’ functionality while creating memorable content opportunities for attendees to share.

02 THE INSIGHT

Rather than presenting technology in isolation, we recognized that home devices exist within the context of people’s lives and aspirations. The holiday season offers a unique opportunity to tap into both the practical and emotional aspects of home life. By showcasing products within a fully realized living space, we could help media and influencers envision how their audiences would actually use and experience these items.

03 THE SOLUTION

Early Spring transformed the penthouse suite at ModernHaus hotel into an aspirational New York City apartment decorated for the holidays. The immersive environment allowed guests to experience Dreame products in natural use settings rather than sterile demonstration spaces. The space featured multiple engagement points: hands-on product testing stations, professional blow-out services using Dreame hair dryers, and an interactive ornament-making workshop that added a festive, shareable moment to the experience. This approach merged product demonstration with lifestyle aspiration, allowing press and influencers to gather both technical information and compelling content while experiencing the products as they would in their own homes during the holiday season.

04 THE RESULT

Early Spring transformed the penthouse suite at ModernHaus hotel into an aspirational New York City apartment decorated for the holidays. The immersive environment allowed guests to experience Dreame products in natural use settings rather than sterile demonstration spaces. The space featured multiple engagement points: hands-on product testing stations, professional blow-out services using Dreame hair dryers, and an interactive ornament-making workshop that added a festive, shareable moment to the experience. This approach merged product demonstration with lifestyle aspiration, allowing press and influencers to gather both technical information and compelling content while experiencing the products as they would in their own homes during the holiday season.

Making Home Tech Feel Like Home

BANKING ON LOVE

TRANSFORMING 23 WALL

23 Wall Street, the former headquarters of JP Morgan Chase, stands as one of New York’s most historically significant buildings. Located directly across from the New York Stock Exchange, this architectural landmark presents both extraordinary potential and complex logistical challenges for events. The venue’s historical status and infrastructure limitations, including no built-in air conditioning or adequate power supply, require innovative solutions for modern use.

  • Design
  • Experiential

01 THE ASK

Transform a storied financial institution into an unconventional wedding venue that would host 160 guests for a three-part celebration: cocktail party, formal dinner, and late-night rave. The vision explicitly excluded traditional wedding elements, notably flowers, while demanding a seamless progression from elegant dining to high-energy nightclub atmosphere. Most critically, distill an extensive 80-page mood board into an achievable vision that maintained the couple’s ambitious dreams.

02 THE INSIGHT

When presented with 80 pages of inspiration, the key challenge wasn’t just logistics – it was clarity. The couple’s vision, while expansive, needed focus. Early Spring recognized that beneath the volume of references lay a coherent story waiting to be told. The solution wasn’t in attempting to execute every idea, but in identifying and amplifying the core elements that would create maximum impact.

03 THE SOLUTION

Early Spring approached the project first as a strategic challenge, analyzing the mood boards to extract essential themes and visual elements. These were consolidated into three focused pages of 4-5 images each, creating a clear roadmap for execution. The space transformation progressed from an elegant cocktail hour showcasing the building’s architectural grandeur to an intimate dinner featuring two dramatic long tables under the magnificent double-height ceiling. The evening culminated in a full-scale, legendary nightclub experience.

04 THE RESULT

The success lay in seamlessly bridging the gap between the venue’s storied past and the couple’s progressive vision, while solving complex technical challenges that remained invisible to guests.

TRANSFORMING 23 WALL

MONTAUK CLIMATE

A Digital Garden in a Sea of Suits: Reinventing the Climate Tech Gathering

Montauk Climate is a climate tech incubator focused on building impactful companies through strategic collaboration with mission-driven founders. Their approach emphasizes the optimization of capital, talent, and ideas to foster success in the climate technology sector. During NYC Climate Week—one of the industry’s busiest periods with over 600 events—Montauk Climate needed to create a memorable experience that would meaningfully connect funders and founders.

  • Brand Positioning
  • Brand Strategy
  • Design
  • Experiential
  • Social Content

01 THE ASK

Create a distinctive event during NYC Climate Week that would effectively bring together funders and founders in the climate technology space, while standing out in an extremely crowded event landscape.

02 THE INSIGHT

The traditional climate tech event landscape is dominated by fireside conversations, pitches, and presentations. These formal environments, typically characterized by corporate atmospheres and conventional networking approaches, often create barriers to authentic connection. The saturation of this format presented an opportunity to differentiate through a more innovative, experiential approach.

03 THE SOLUTION

Early Spring partnered with Toronto-based digital artist Diana Lynn VanderMeulen to create an immersive experience titled “Pixel As Seed.” The installation explored the intersection of digital art and land conservation, drawing inspiration from the artist’s personal experience in revitalizing unused farmland. The pixelated ecological imagery invited attendees to contemplate the relationship between technology and environmental preservation.

04 THE RESULT

The environment facilitated natural networking and authentic conversation earning recognition as a standout gathering during NYC Climate Week, successfully differentiating Montauk Climate while fostering meaningful connections between climate tech leaders and innovators.

A Digital Garden in a Sea of Suits: Reinventing the Climate Tech Gathering

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. 

Origins

Discover London

Embedded into the ground we walk on, a magical network of mycelium works quietly. It forms a resilient, fortifying foundation from which all life, Earth’s entire life force, flourishes.

In many ways, London is a microcosm of the planet’s mycelium network.

Within its biosphere a rare breed of thinker & creator, draws on the organic to create potent & pure works that nourish, inform, challenge and propel society into the future.

Origins & Early Spring invite curious guests on an adventure through fairytale gardens, towering treetops, & waterways in a quest to uncover the spores of genius – unleashing the mind unto the extraordinary power of nature – urging them to Never Stop Discovering.

  • Brand Positioning
  • Brand Strategy
  • Design
  • Film And Video
  • Influencer

01 THE ASK

Having secured a sponsorship opportunity for the Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi exhibit at London’s Somerset House, Origins tasked Early Spring with concepting a 3-day trip through the British capital for 30 key global retail partners and beauty influencers.

Each activity had to tactfully tie in a product benefit and pair back to who Origins is as a brand: Powered by Nature, Proven by Science; their Nature to Do Good; the focus on Inner Harmony & Outer Beauty, and finally, the global Origins story of endless discovery.

02 THE INSIGHT

The last two years have seen over 100 new skincare brands debuting in department and specialty stores. Given this sea of choice, 91% consumers admit they would switch brands to one that felt more mission-driven. What’s more, 80% say that they want to know more about how the products they use are being made. A watershed moment for Origins, they sought to crystallize their position & ethos as a brand dedicated to a more holistic & mindful approach to skincare.

03 THE SOLUTION

Inspired by their Origins’ founding motto philosophy, their growing sustainability initiatives & of course, their bestselling products, Early Spring designed & produced a 3-day trip that fascinated guests, radiating the brand, its story & products for months to come.

04 THE RESULT

Designed as a triptych, each day focused on an essential aspect of the Origins story while highlighting the brand’s hero product line. Each of the trip’s activities had a strategic purpose that dialed back to one of the brand’s pillars – their foundations in science, their philanthropic initiatives & their focus on providing consumers with a holistic experience.

Every activity had a different set design, integrating the brand’s products & ingredients in an arresting way. To highlight their founding motto, Powered by Nature, Proven by Science, we transported guests in a branded double-decker bus to Kew Gardens, the largest botanical & mycological collection in the world. Origins’ president, Julie van Ongevalle, shed light on their sustainability initiatives over a farm-to-table lunch at Petersham Nurseries. Paying tribute to the brand’s collaboration with Somerset House, guests descended upon an Origins’ green lit courtyard & dined at Spring, a restaurant tucked into the iconic landmark. We then paired the brand’s dedication to creating holistic, sensorial experiences with their driving concepts of achieving inner harmony & outer beauty to transform a trendy lunchtime spot, Wild by Tart, into a day-time spa, pampering guests with sound baths & facials. Finally, we threw a farewell party at the Conduit Club, a hub for social entrepreneurs.

Working with Estee Lauder, we ushered in a new era of social media strategy for the brand. Capturing the activities in real-time, we leveraged a host of innovative mixed-media Instagram formats, broadcasting them in near real-time. Our work paid off: Origins Taiwan sold out of brand’s hero product & e-commerce sales increased by more than 100%.

The Arrivals

The OutThere Lab

Over hundreds of thousands of years humans have evolved primarily as an outdoor species. 

 

Industrialization and technology compounded in the last two hundred years has brought us inside where we now spend 90% of our time. 

 

This Resource Center is an institution that provides the tools and knowledge necessary to blur the lines between the individual and the elements, ultimately empowering humans to get back #outthere.

  • Design
  • Experiential Retail
  • Pop-up Store

01 THE ASK

With a legacy of beautifully designed pop-up retail spaces in their wake, The Arrivals came to Early Spring to step their game up and create a space that not only looked great, but integrated an overarching narrative focused on outerwear for out there. 

02 THE INSIGHT

Industrialization and technology compounded in the last two hundred years has brought us inside where we now spend 90% of our time. 

03 THE SOLUTION

To cement the brand’s position at the intersection of form and function, we created a space that brought notions of the ‘out there’ inside, pairing product against the backdrop of their use cases.

04 THE RESULT

The space is a re-imagination of a community resource center in the near future; stark and clinical, it is the last stop for explorers to stock up on equipment and gain valuable insight from seasoned guides to face the elements of the omitted Out There.

Products are showcased through the space, while the latest innovations are highlighted with analogous vignettes that draw a clear visual delineation to their use cases.

Harnessing modularity, the space can be transformed to serve as a community meeting center, hosting forums and discussions.

VEVO

Music Television The Way It Was Meant To Be

Long before the pandemic, Vevo hedged it’s bets on the proliferation of connected television. It was only inevitable that when the opportunity to personalise their viewing experience become available that consumers would prefer to pilot their own way through the music videos and artists they loved. With stay-at-home mandates, came a resurgence of the television—stadiums, stages and sets converged in the living room.

With over 40 million daily viewers in the US and 150 million globally, Vevo’s investment in connected television was paying off. The 2021 IAB NewFronts would be the place to galvanize media buyers around the platform, but the traditionally glitzy in-person event would now be experienced behind a screen.

Vevo tapped Early Spring to develop a fresh perspective on a brand narrative to launch at the IAB NewFronts and collateral its sales force would use to secure ad dollars.

Early Spring pulled back the curtain of Vevo’s staggering numbers, drawn to explore the science behind the emotional & cerebral connections triggered by music videos.

We sought to get to the heart of why music videos are the optimum medium for cultural influence.

  • Brand Positioning
  • Brand Strategy
  • Design
  • Film And Video

01 THE ASK

Leverage Vevo’s growing viewership, content & capabilities to capture advertisers’ attention & a lion’s share of their dollars.

02 THE INSIGHT

When watching music videos, we are more likely to feel positive about and recall ads.

Music activates the part of the brain that is crucial to processing & registering emotion, the amygdala. When processing music the amygdala releases chemicals responsible for bonding, trust & intimacy. Further, when the brain copes to processes the compounded stimulation of music and simultaneous visuals, recall is improved.

03 THE SOLUTION

Early Spring joined forces with DLA productions to script, direct and shoot a digital NewFronts Presentation for Vevo.

Beyond that, we restructured Vevo’s internal sales deck integrating a narrative approach to bring the brand to life for media buyers.

04 THE RESULT

Madonna’s Vogue. Beyonce’s Formation. Kendrick’s Humble. Drake’s God’s Plan. Wet Ass Pussy. 

Visually arresting, these manifestos shock & awe the mind, flooding it with emotion. They dare to rewrite the rules of how fame, power, freedom & beauty come to be & their very potential.  

More than a creative mark of excellence, Vevo is the petri dish from which culture takes shape & evolves. It is a laboratory for cultural experimentation, where creators provoke the antiquated &, in turn, synthesize a new way of being, of doing, of interacting with one another. 

By leveraging music videos’ ability to create lasting impact, Early Spring positioned Vevo as the gatekeepers of culture, inviting brands to its platform in an effort to permeate society on a molecular level.