Building an Owned Event Brand and Experience
I created Piano Academy and directed its first three annual editions as Piano’s flagship in-person community, thought-leadership, and content platform, building a repeatable identity and presentation system that extended beyond the event itself.
Piano
Creator / Design Director
Three annual editions · anchor year 2024
Creative Direction
Brand Identity
Design Systems
Digital Experience
Brand Implementation
Challenge
Piano needed a recurring experience that could deepen its industry community, present company and guest expertise, support pipeline, and generate useful content after the event.
Piano needed an annual experience capable of holding community, thought leadership, keynotes, product presentation, pipeline objectives, and future campaign content within one coherent platform. It also needed enough distinction to feel ownable while remaining recognizably part of Piano.
Approach
Create a distinct event brand and presentation system, then improve the quality, organization, and usefulness of the experience across successive editions.
I created the event and its brand system, led the visual presentation of the in-person experience, directed video production for intros, interstitials, and keynotes, and concepted on-site content capture for later marketing and subsequent editions. I focused on the visual and production expression while partnering with an Event Marketer who owned logistics.
Outcomes
Piano Academy became a repeatable flagship experience reaching roughly 500 attendees from more than 40 countries, with captured content extending its value into ongoing marketing.
The 2024 edition reached approximately 500 attendees from more than 40 countries. Piano’s wider events portfolio was reported as contributing nearly 40% of new-logo and cross-sell pipeline; that figure is portfolio-level context unless Academy-specific reporting is recovered.
This case demonstrates how creative direction can turn an event into durable brand infrastructure: a repeatable experience, presentation system, and content engine that compounds over time.
Built a repeatable identity and presentation system spanning event pages, stage experience, motion, keynotes, environmental graphics, collateral, and post-event content.
Raised production value across successive editions through stronger venue, video, and stage-presentation decisions.
Created a capture model that allowed the experience to continue through content and subsequent campaigns.
Established an ownable annual platform rather than a one-off event identity.
Miles Courtney
Work
Information