“Don't call us nerds”
• What we've done •
- Event design
- Copywriting
- Advertising
- Fundraising tools
- Digital Marketing
- Social Media
- Video spot
- Web design
- Drupal development
Technology events are extraordinary melting pots of innovation but they're often packaged as boring and reserved to nerdy people, pushing away a lot of potential participants.
Mara Marzocchi, Codemotion Project Manager, wants to make a fresh event, attracting much more people.
Ok, this is an event targeted to technology dudes. This is the challenge: making it funny for geeks, nerds, enthusiasts. Can you do it?
We started working at the event at his 3rd edition, in 2009. They don't have a well defined brand, but the name contains the word Java, which is a well-known brand by itself, so we can change it's appearance without losing the general meaning.
We want to make people dream, taking them away, for one day, from the cliché of “nerd with a thousand bug to solve”.
2009: third edition
Our creatives create a mascot, soon called “The Java Guy”. He's a typical 70ies character, with a red undershirt, big sunglasses, and a a "I love javaday" tattoo with a Duke, the Java language mascot. The event slogan becomes “There is no day like Javaday”.
The users like the new image a lot. The website visits peak. The event get loads of people signing up, and the video spot, full of 70ies stereotypes, is a viral success.
At the event entrance we put a fake tattoo, with a stamp, which is the same of the Java Guy: people can't but smile.
We have 400 more participants than to the previous year: a real success.
2010: Javaday IV
We worked well: in 2010 we are hired again to manage branding and communication for the Javaday.
This is the year of District 9, Star Trek, the return of great SciFi movies.
Javaday is moving in another galaxy!
The new payoff “A day in a different universe” announces the 2010 event, that will take place in deep space. The website reminds us the contrast between the pitch black of space and the white from spaceships we've seen in Alien and 2001: a space odissey.
The video spot, created in Computer Graphic animation by our Ermanno De Nicola (two nominations at David di Donatello for special effects), is a trip into deep space, where each planets represents a key point of the event. The "Javaday Equation" is a syntesis of the event made with numbers: a great marketing tools compact and effective for the targeted technical audience.
The gadget design is SciFi related too: USB pen drives with hi-tech SciFi graphics sells like crazy; T-Shirts with silver print become like Star Trek costumes.
+18% of participants: a great success, again!
Towards Codemotion
In 2011, after two years of success, we are ready to a turning point: the event opens to all technologies, not only Java language. Javaday becomes Codemotion.
A new adventure we are living right now!
The 2010 video spot
A look at the finished work
