Downtown Jacksonville’s iconic Barnett Bank Tower is just a shell of a building, but this historical landmark will soon become a new “entrepreneurial ecosystem” filled with offices, classrooms, apartments, and retail space. Developer Southeast Group, along with Stache Investments and startup incubator KYN, approached Harbinger Innovation Group (Jacksonville, Fla.) to help them execute their ambitious vision of an event that could embrace the under-construction nature of the space, tell the story of the building in a museum-quality display, and create an event that would be a highlight of the now world-famous One Spark crowdfunding festival.
Working directly with the KYN creative team, Harbinger Innovation Group developed "The Barnett" brand for the building and helped articulate the "where Jacksonville history meets the future" theme. Harbinger Innovation Group then established thebarnettjax.com microsite for KYN's design and implemented an engagement strategy through email and social media.
On location, Harbinger Innovation Group helped KYN create a projection installation with dynamic user-generated content to create a timeline of innovation in Jacksonville as well as high definition video screens that showcased the video content developed with Tiger Lily Media.
Harbinger Innovation Group worked with Harbinger Sign to print KYN's content directly onto plywood sheets to create a museum-quality design that fit the wood and concrete motif. Their sign shop also produced full color digital prints of the event's branding and renderings of the restored buildings on the exterior arched windows and on museum-quality foam core on the interior display walls. Plywood sandwich board signs with printing on transparent acrylic rounded out the event's signage program.
On each day of the One Spark festival, The Barnett was the only place where visitors could get out of the sun, cool off, and charge their phones while exploring the past and future of Jacksonville alongside the people making it happen.
On the final evening of One Spark, the exclusive Legends Dinner Series also took place inside the event space, further promoting all of the goals before an influential audience.
Over the course of the event, thousands of people came through the space and even more have engaged more deeply through email and social media. It was one of the most talked about venues at One Spark. KYN’s Mike Fretto said the event “exceeded all expectations,” and Southeast’s Steve Atkins called it a big success.
