Ahead of WordCamp US, the largest WordPress activation in the tech world at the time hosting over 1500 attendees from around the world, Media Temple's Creative team was asked to concept a theme worthy of our investment. After a small internal design bake-off, my Glamping concept was chosen! Over the course of this project, I was tasked with leading the execution of the brief, team implementation, and the QA of all deliverables. This is the story of how that went. Don't forget to pack your bug spray!
The design challenge was very simple: How might we walk the fine line between "cute" and "elevated"? After all, we chose "Glamping" ("glam" + "camping") as a clever way to showcase Media Temple's elevated and polished approach to their web hosting solutions.
Since the "Glamping" concept was my nomination that won, I was put in charge of coordinating the implementation of the project in time for the event. This meant that I wasn't just to design and ship the deliverables; I also needed to:
Ideate and plan the booth's layout
Source relevant SWAG items to customize and their templates
Coordinate and delegate print and digital deliverable tasks
Ensure consistency and quality of the campaign concept
What I built
Glamping in the Wild
For the core visual strategy of this concept, I illustrated 4 x glamping tents, each signifying a web-hosting product based on features and hosting space. The idea here was to show flexibility—even luxury can be accessible with Media Temple because there’s something for everyone. These base assets created the central theme that the entire team designed the campaign around.
Our team had an existing Agile cadence using 2-week KANBAN sprints, with a sprint planning meeting to start each one. Together, we created tasks for this campaign that made the most sense for the workflow. I began with determining what exact deliverables we needed: Sourcing templates, and getting their budgets approved through our Director of Experiential Marketing. Our copywriter also started ideating event tag lines and catchphrases to use meanwhile.
BTW do you know how fun it is to source camping-related SWAG? REALLY FUN, as it turns out! Since the company wanted to really stand out, I was asked to be as creative as possible. I chose an unconventional baseball T-shirt style, sourced camping mugs to print our logo on, and even found a "tent-shaped" matchbox!
For our next sprint, we created tasks over the next sprint or two with the following deliverables. See the task workflow below as well.
As a result of our impact at WordCamp US, Media Temple was again invited to the smaller LA WordCamp event, showing to around 400 attendees. Media Temple achieved memorable brand recognition, and appropriate fanfare. The SWAG we brought to each event was popular, and mostly cleaned out by the end of them both! My favorite part of this experience was creating branded items that people cherished (and that didn't end up in a landfill).
