NICE LIVE 2018

Background

NICE Project (an acronym for New Innovative Customer Experiences) is an innovation project founded in 2012. Over time, the project has evolved from being a pilot project focusing on innovating service and customer experiences in the Greater Capital of Denmark to an established nationwide project.

Utilising various methods, including experiments and analyses, and voicing a strong mission to improve service experiences, NICE seeks to facilitate a transition from delivering traditional services to co-creating personal, memorable experiences. Ultimately, the goal is to make Denmark more attractive for international guests.

As a manifestation of NICE Project’s results and experiences, Crone & Co was asked to conceptualise and plan the one-day conference NICE LIVE 2018. The primary purpose of the conference was to summarise and pass on the project’s results to the conference guests, thus inspiring them to embrace the NICE mindset and get motivated to implement it in their own organisations.

Solution

NICE Project wanted to create a conference where the NICE mindset was a recurrent theme and a red thread through the conference. Instead of making a traditional conference, it was prioritised to put knowledge and learning into play, thereby enabling the participants to test and try methods on their own.

The concept developed by Crone & Co for NICE LIVE 2018 was “a different festival experience”. The day was turned into a mini festival rather than a traditional conference and everything from the professional programme to venue decoration and catering was wrapped in a festival context. The participants could explore the programme by visiting different “stages”, each focusing on different NICE themes. The breaks were as central as the professional programme and were designed to underpin the festival atmosphere. In the festively decorated Main Stage area, participants could get their food from different food stalls while enjoying a range of whimsical and surprising acts.

NICE LIVE 2018 took place in KADK’s beautiful auditoria and the programme introduced various alternative workshop formats such as for example a forum theatre where typical dilemmas in the meeting between service provider and guest were challenged and solved together.

Result

From arrival to leaving NICE LIVE 2018, participants were met by smiling event coordinator students and waiter apprentices, who as part of their education helped out all day. With a festival bracelet around the wrist and a ‘festival site’ encouraging co-creation, participants experienced and helped create a unique and alternative conference experience and the NICE Manifesto was truly unfolded.