From the superbowl to the St Michaels beach

Although Unplugged is a relatively new company, it is staffed by creative people with a long history of award winning work. The creative ethos of Unplugged revolves around the use of non traditional spaces, concepts and methodologies for corporate communication. "We're not plugged into wide screen video or 'Extrav', but rather into industrial theatre and since we're not plugged into the creative norm, we decided to create something by the creatives, for the creatives, with the creatives."

Apart from the new judging format and move from Sun City to Margate, there were many firsts in the production on two award nights from Unplugged.

Unusual about the event was the use of scratch DJ's combined with live musicians to create the backing track for the event as the walkup music and fanfares. Typically it would be a case of canned music played in via CD's, etc. The use of live scratch DJs and live musos gave Unplugged a great deal more flexibility when reacting to the mood of the crowd. For instance, when the 'dueling blow up beach toys' started in the audience spontaneously, DJ's we're able to go with the crowd in much the same way that a club DJ would.

Another innovative creative happening was the real time generation of visual effects on the side screens with funky 'pop art'. This came from live cameras in the venue focusing on interesting looking visuals which where then fed into a laptop and a graphics package that had been downloaded from the web. This was the work of Andrew Wessels. Unplugged's suppliers at The Project animated graphics. Frame grab frames for the sponsors intro's were produced by a company called - format.

Margate was initially was met with slack jaw amazement from the industry. "But once we'd been there for a 'recce' we could see the sense in their madness," says Melvill. "Margate is intimate and therefore you 'own the space'."

The people of Margate - from the mayor through to the chief of police and down - had a 'can do' attitude that is simply unheard of in the big city, big event environment.

Melvill notes that everyone who briefs in an awards style event says 'look at how it's done at the Oscars and take your cues from there'! "This is where the ridiculous local arrangement of TV continuity announcers on stage with white envelopes has traditionally come from. We didn't want that, and we didn't want the agonizing site of enough tables of 10 to fill a red square all standing there in perfect formation along with one free bottle of wine and a cold starter."

In the previous era, it didn't take much to figure out that if you found yourself at a table in the front you were a winner and if you were sitting at the very back along with your expectant client, you were in for a bad night.

Above all, the Unplugged rationale was that because this event was being held in Margate, the offerings of the area had to be put to use. "From there it became quite easy. For instance 'how do we introduce Wing Wing - the chairman'? Well, guess what? Wing Wing can't swim. And there we were on a beach staffed with Lifeguards. We put Wing Wing in water wings and got the life guards to carry him onto stage!"

"That essentially was our cornerstone creative thought and we took it from there. Enter the fire brigade, Miss Hibiscus, the local biker gang, the drum majorette team, Miss Body Beautiful and the third strongest man in the world and the local Niel Diamond impersonator."

In conclusion, Melvill comments that the team felt that it had been a challenge, but also a rewarding and worthwhile exercise. "Hopefully we've set some sort of stake in the sand for someone else to try and better next year. But someone had to be the first to pitch a tent against the wind and the tide and I'm proud of the fact that it was us who were the brave ones. Next year we plan to book Rovos Rail, turn it into a cigar lounge on wheels and trundle down to Margate with all our clients to actually enjoy the weekend, not work!"

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