How Avery Dennison made engagement and collaboration come alive through the Premier League.
At a glance
During the pandemic, Avery Dennison wanted to keep its Asia-Pacific teams connected while virtual meetings replaced in-person contact. FocusU designed the Avery Premier League: a six-month virtual tournament that brought together a 3,000+ employee base across APAC.
- 3,000+
employee base across APAC
- 6 months
of monthly virtual match days
- 7
teams, each with its own logo and war cry
- Client
- Avery Dennison
- Region
- Asia-Pacific, across many countries
- Format
- Virtual: monthly live team events plus an app with a live leaderboard
- Duration
- 6 months, ending in a day-long Grand Finale
- Focus areas
- Engagement, cross-cultural relationships, collaboration
- Programme
- Avery Premier League (APL)
The challenge
As the pandemic went on, Avery Dennison needed to keep the momentum going for its teams. Virtual connects had replaced in-person interaction, and the team was spread across many countries.
The brief was: "Create an opportunity for cross-cultural relationships & collaboration through a sustained campaign of fun, team building engagements for a 3000+ employee base, spread across many countries in the Asia- Pacific region."
The design rules we set
- Run for 6 months, with one story, not one-off events
- Keep the excitement going between events
- Work for a multi-cultural audience across APAC
- End on a high
Our approach
We built the programme like a sports league. Once a month, nominated players from each of the seven teams met online to compete in a virtual team activity.
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Teams and captains
The APAC team was split into 7 teams, each with its own branding, logo and war cry. Team leaders were encouraged to create videos to inspire their teams, and nominated captains rallied them.
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Monthly match days
On a scheduled day each month, the teams competed virtually. Whoever the team nominated played that day.
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An app between events
A live, year-to-date leaderboard ran on an app that also worked as a social channel for APAC employees, with challenges, photos and videos to like and comment on.
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Grand Finale
Teaser mailers kept nominations coming. The league ended with a day-long Grand Finale and award ceremony in November.
The seven challenges
We chose activities that would work for a diverse audience, and sequenced them so teams never knew what was coming next.
- Body, Mind & Sole Challenge: a run of quirky fitness and mind challenges
- The Escape Room Challenge: clues and puzzles in a mythical world
- Map the City Challenge: finding spots across a city and cracking clues
- The Quizimodo Challenge: quizzes to free a captured colleague
- Crime Scene Investigation: piecing together evidence to find the culprit
- Countdown to Sixty: 60-second challenges inspired by "Minute to win it"
- The Digital Olympics Challenge: energy, mental agility and physical endurance
The impact
Every monthly event was well contested by employees from across the APAC region. Anticipation built towards the Grand Finale, with everyone rallying behind their team.
Participants said the league gave them a way to meet colleagues across the region while working from home. In the words of one, from India: "The engagement on the app gave us an opportunity to know each other at a personal level and to build diverse relationships".
"Thank you so much to you and your team for a wonderful APL 1.0 journey. All the activities (both live events and Gametize) were designed and managed perfectly. We look forward to a similar partnership with your team for APL 2.0."
Nivedita Debnath
Director, Learning & OD|APAC
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"With most of us working from home right now, the APL games have brought us back together each month in a social way. The games are well thought out, challenging, but most of all, fun. I always look forward to each session."
Keith StMart
Regional Telecom Lead, AP
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"I would like to congratulate and thank the L&OD team for helping us with such an engaging and fun event- APL. These sessions gave us a chance to meet and know people across APAC, and have fun together as a team. This will also help in future when we reach out to these people for work-related projects. All the activities were well planned and really brought the team spirit in us. Overall, it's been a fantastic fun and learning experience!
Suhas Bhatia
GRS, India
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