“Online has definitely occupied its niche,” — Crazy Panda about the experience of holding corporate events “in numbers”

Note: this project won in the nomination “Creativity” at the event of game HR specialists “Game Dev HR Awards”, organized by the recruiting platform Talents In Games.

Alexander Semenov, Editor-in-Chief App2Top.ru : Olya, hi! Tell me a little about yourself. How long have you been in the industry and what do you do in Crazy Panda?

Olga Agafonova

Olga Agafonova, Crazy Panda event manager: I joined the ranks of Crazy Panda almost two years ago. I am responsible for the event direction. Prior to Panda, she was engaged in the development of the HR brand and corporate culture in companies unrelated to the gaming industry. Working at Crazy Panda is my first experience in game development.

Let’s start with the background. You decided to make a big digital corporate event for a company that sits remotely because of the self-isolation mode. In honor of what is the corporate party?

Olga: This year “Panda” has its first big anniversary – we turned ten years old. Usually, on the company’s birthday, we gather a rather immodest party: everyone — including remote employees — come with their second halves.

With such a noisy and cheerful company, we are going out of town for a couple of days. From the point of view of the organization, a summer trip is one of the most difficult projects, where enormous preparation and attention to detail are required. But this departure is loved by the whole company, it is already a tradition.

This year we had another reason to celebrate – literally a month before the decade, our new corporate identity of the company was ready. The new identity shows our path from a cute and slightly insane panda with dynamite in his paw to a serious and ambitious bear who intercepted a stick of dynamite with his teeth in order to achieve his goals faster.

It was important for us not just to present a new corporate identity, but also to tell what changes in the company we wanted to reflect. We had to combine this task organically with the celebration of the anniversary, which could not be held live because of the coronavirus.

We will focus a little later on what format you have come to. Before that, please tell us what possible scenarios were considered, what ideas were there and why they did not fit?

Olga: It’s pretty simple. There were two possible scenarios: to hold the event online or not to hold it at all. Our anniversary came at the height of lockdown and restrictive measures, so we did not consider the offline format.

As a result, you decided to do a long five-day event. Why did you decide to do something so long in time?

Olga: Firstly, this format had an absolutely practical task – to attract at least eighty percent of all employees to the events during the week.

In Panda, of course, there is a cultural code that is unique to us. I think you can always say about us, “Oh, look, this guy is definitely from Crazy Panda.” There is something in us that unites us all. At the same time, our team is very diverse in terms of hobbies and preferred activities: classes that are interesting to one part of people do not respond in any way to the other.

We had to come up with content that was completely different in form and content, where everyone could find exactly what would hook them. Such a task could not be solved by one or even a couple of events.

Secondly, the first four days with activities were supposed to fuel interest in the main party on Friday. We had discussions of past and planned activities in internal chats all week, the guys shared their impressions and this gave a sense of the scale and significance of what was happening.

It is extremely difficult to keep the attention of the guests of the online event for more than two or three hours, so we adhered to this timing in each event. This is another reason why all the events were spaced out for a week.

Tell us about the event in detail. What kind of program was there, what online activities were carried out?

Olga: Online events have many nuances, one of them is attention retention. An employee may be loyal to the company, but if you offer boring and banal events, he, with all his loyalty, will still choose his favorite TV series or game or “go” to a concert, of which there are many freely available now. We needed exclusive content, we wanted to give the participants a new experience that they could not get anywhere else. The ready-made offers of the event market did not suit us, and we came up with an absolutely unique event in terms of content.

The events of each day referred to a certain stage of the company’s development.

On the first day, we held a workshop on creative techniques and figured out why creativity is more mathematics, and not a developed imagination.

In the evening of the same day we had a master class “Poker Face”. I think you can guess why we learned to read emotions on faces and hide them. We couldn’t ignore our first and favorite project – World Poker Club!

We have a great game – Pirate Tales. We’ve been racking our brains for a long time about what to offer people so that it links to the game and the period when we were working on it. And then they’re like, “Oh, Eureka! And let’s teach people fencing and saber fighting. It’s great to feel like a real pirate!” But what and how will the participants fence? With broom handles? We found a solution: we bought and sent training swords to all participants. This event gathered a large number of participants. I think it’s because we combined a useful and unexpected experience with a fan. This is exactly what people are waiting for – fun, after which you also have a new skill.

In our Evil Defender game, I adore the very idea – peaceful villains defend their tower from kind invaders. The forces of darkness turn out to be the oppressed side in this story. In the context of this game, we had a good lecture on storytelling from a recognized guru in this field – Vasya Esmanov, the creator of Look At Me Media and a consultant for companies such as Yandex and TimePad. We talked about how to come up with catchy stories and heroes, how stories change the world and each of us.

One day we played the game “Amnesia“. In fact, this is an action-packed first-person thriller, where we connect to the main character through Zoom, make decisions on how to act, try to make the “right choice” and save not only the main character, but also prevent a global apocalypse. With a good script, competent organization and excellent work of the actors, at some point you stop perceiving it as a game, immerse yourself in the plot and for you it becomes a reality for a few hours.

They also spent an evening watching short films and discussing them with a film critic, a lecture on applied astronomy with astrophysicist Kirill Maslennikov. I wouldn’t have thought it, but astronomy was a huge success!

At the Mad Cook Show, we cooked a delicious quesadilla with a super-charismatic chef! We delivered the products in advance with the expectation that our employee would not only learn the secrets of cooking, but also feed the whole family!

After a week of events, the main party was held on Friday. We had an official part where the CEO congratulated everyone and thanked them for their contribution to the development of the company, told about where the company started and how it changed. The end of his speech was the presentation of a new corporate identity, the clinking of glasses and the unpacking of surprises – it was merch with our new style! Following Bogdan, the “Panda friends” shared their memories — our former employees who made a significant contribution to the development of the company and who have now left all over the world.

We had a separate landing page with a “main stage” and a rich show program and several Zoom rooms that were occupied by the presenters after their performance on the “main stage”. During the whole event, we received some crazy amount of messages from the guys in the chats, everyone wanted to share their opinion about the new corporate identity, about the past, present and future of the Panda, or just chat. We managed to create an atmosphere of a real holiday, which is so lacking during restrictive measures!

At the end of each of our corporate parties, several interest groups are always formed, which disperse throughout the holiday territory. This time it was the same – in one zoom room, cozy conversations continued for several hours after the official end.

How ready were people to watch the master classes? Was there a situation when a person was essentially alone, for example, with a training video?

Olga: The number of participants at each event exceeded our preliminary expectations. We announced the program for the week in advance and gave people the opportunity to choose an event to their liking. The most frequent question we’ve heard is: “Hey, will there be a video recording? Here the events intersect, and I want to get to everything!”

We didn’t have a single instructional video in the classical sense of the word. One of the most important tasks that we set ourselves was to give a new experience through interaction and emotions. This approach gave a super result: guys who usually refuse offline activities in favor of something of their own came to the events. I think this is a good criterion for evaluating the event.

How many third-party personnel were involved to organize the events?

Olga: I find it difficult to name the total number, but on Friday we definitely had 18 actors in the office.

What unexpected difficulties have you encountered in organizing?

Olga: We have not encountered such.

I was familiar with the presenter and several invited “stars”, I had already organized corporate parties for Panda employees, so there were no sudden difficulties at all. We were able to anticipate all the critical moments and prescribe a “plan B”, and there are always minor inconsistencies.

For example, we had a Text game. The main character (the role is played by a real actress) wakes up in the forest, does not understand anything and tries to link the memories together. Players are viewers who connect via Zoom and try to help her.

It was a live action that took place geographically in a forest near Moscow. On the day when the game was supposed to take place, the weather was so terrible that the Ministry of Emergency Situations recommended not to leave home. Therefore, we decided to postpone this game. This was probably the most unexpected difficulty.

How long did you prepare the event?

Olga: We started preparing for the decade last year: collecting ideas, looking for cool combinations in activities, thinking about how to combine a new identity and merch, but, of course, we did not expect total self-isolation.

When the time came to decide on the format, it became clear that offline, which we are used to, would be impossible. So we decided to make the most of the online.

The stages of preparation were not much different from the stages that we would have gone through offline: initiative group, brainstorming, prioritization of an idea, “throwing out” completely unsuccessful decisions or those that are difficult to implement.

When we decided what we see as the main party of the decade, what is mandatory, and where we can fantasize, we began to try, purchase and send into production everything that needs to be prepared.

We have already sent “quarantine kits” to employees, so we roughly understood the limitations and delivery times in different regions.

Our HRD Ksenia took over a large block related to communication with “Panda friends”. Many left, changed not only the company, but also the field of activity, so the formation of the final video took a lot of time.

I worked out the details of the program with a creative agency, and the marketing department prepared promotional materials inside the company. The actors and presenters were in our office, so we used our office managers and security service to comfortably turn it into a studio.

What conclusions did you make for yourself after the event?

Olga: If you think that online is emotionless, then you are doing something wrong.

Do you plan to work in this format in the future, even if the self-isolation regime is removed?

Olga: The future of events, at least, belongs to the hybrid format. I mean, when part of the content is offline and part is online. Or, perhaps, when the event is held in a “live” format for part of the audience, and in a digital format for another part.

In our case, the hybrid is most relevant for small events and distributed teams, when it makes no sense for remote employees to come to the office for a couple of hours, or when it is physically impossible, and there is a hunt to participate.

Of course, some events will only be in offline format, because it makes no sense to deny the importance of live communication and personal participation in physical activities. To watch someone ride a jet ski and take a ride with the breeze on the river yourself is not the same thing, right?

At the same time, online has definitely occupied its niche, has shown efficiency. So it will remain a trend for a very long time.

Thanks for the interview!