KPMG calls on icandi COMMUNICATIONS to assist with staging Sun City quiz show

For the 2010 KPMG Africa Partners' Conference held at Sun City, icandi COMMUNICATIONS, a strategically driven agency with specialist knowledge of the finance industry, was tasked with pausing to reflect and celebrate on a long list of KPMG's more significant deals and other achievements across Africa in all lines of business.

"We knew it would be a challenge to bring all the information across in a short space of time and in an engaging manner, especially in this traditionally difficult part of the day for any conference, which is why we called in icandi COMMUNICATIONS. If anyone can spin straw into gold, it's this team, which they proved once again with the execution of a slick and professional quiz show," says Rue Bateman, Associate Director: KPMG Marketing, Communications and Corporate Citizenship.

Drawing on the state-of-the-art multimedia staging of the conference, including extreme widescreens, and theatrical lighting and sound, and the extravagant ambiance of Sun City as an entertainment venue, this Johannesburg-based agency created a quiz show combining popular styles. The name of the show? "Done Deal" of course.

"The idea behind 'Done Deal' was to translate the television concept of 'edutainment' to a conference setting. The quiz show format was the perfect vehicle as it enabled us to engage and entertain the audience to the point where they could collaborate with each other over the answers," says Kim Nelson, Managing Director, icandi COMMUNICATIONS.

To ensure the information being highlighted was matched only by the entertainment generated, a great deal of effort and investment was put into the authenticity of the show, including elements like a show sting, lighting rig, studio cameraman, full stage set up complete with briefcases and beautiful assistants, and fully utilising the three large video screens to cut between graphic illustrations of the questions, scoreboards and footage of the audience.

With only an hour to set up and an hour to execute the show, timing became the biggest challenge - a hurdle quickly overcome with a lot of rehearsals and a close collaboration with the technical team of Thornleys AV. No doubt when the KPMG partners returned from their lunch break they were surprised to find the Royal Ballroom conference venue transformed into what appeared to be a live television studio, with themselves cast in the role of "live studio audience".

Of course no quiz show would be complete without the well timed input of a witty, tough and consummate quizmaster. Popular 'action man', motivational speaker and humourist, Gavin Sharples, pulled this off with ease, making sure the contestants and audience were at once engaged and entertained by his trademark wit and professional charm.

In the end, working closely with the conference organisers particularly to tighten the brief and ensure the content relevance, all of these elements worked together to ensure that, when the house lights went down and the show titles came up, the 300 KPMG partners who had come to Sun City from all over Africa and further afield found themselves in a completely different, well informed and thoroughly entertaining experience. Now that's good biz!