Thanks to that effort, Britten was awarded the assignment. Paul Britten, president of Britten, crated and submitted a balsa wood miniature prototype of how his company could deliver that experience. “A lot of customers turn to us because they know we can execute a project quickly.” “We still do a lot of digital printing, but another area we have really grown into is what’s called ‘experiential’ or ‘event’ marketing, and we have worked with Octagon on several projects befor,” says Mike Dudek, senior designer at Britten. The folks at Britten, she says, “got the concept immediately,” and guaranteed they could meet the deadline.Īccording to Britten officials, their company has thirty-plus years of experience helping some of the world’s largest brands visually connect with their audience. The contraption had to be designed, built, and installed inside a 30-by-30-foot pavilion in just over a month. Murphy put out a request for proposals on a “Rube Goldberg” experience to convey that concept and encourage purchases of (RED)-affiliated brands, with special requirements. The goal was to engage and entertain the public while showing how every contribution to Project (RED) builds into life-changing benefits, providing much-needed medication for those in the Third World. “One of their executives had an idea for some type of machine or physical structure to demonstrate how one small change can have a major impact,” says Tiffany Murphy, senior event producer for Octagon. Sponsored by Bank of America to promote and support its affiliation with the charitable organization Project (RED) (red.org) and its efforts to end AIDS in Africa, this life-sized “Rube Goldberg Experience” drew crowds and raised thousand’s of dollars in donations, twenty cents at a time, over four days in early December.Įvent marketing specialists Octagon coordinated and managed the project on behalf of client Bank of America. Recently Britten, Inc., of Traverse City, Michigan designed and delivered a modern-day Goldbergian take on such comic engineering for visitors to New York City’s Bryant Park. Others may know this creative reliance on chain reactions from playing the favorite childhood game Mousetrap.
If you’re of a certain age, mention of “Rube Goldberg” brings to mind the cartoonist’s convoluted machines designed for accomplishing simple tasks.