The brief
TMOA needed a partner who could hold the tension between a CME-accredited scientific programme and a gala awards evening, without letting either feel second to the other. The previous agency had flattened the awards night into a ceremony. Delegates loved the sessions and walked out on the gala.
The challenge
Two audiences, one day. Doctors want rigour, accurate timekeeping, accredited CME credits, precise speaker flow across parallel tracks. The same doctors then want to feel something at 8pm. We had to deliver both at broadcast quality, with 2,500 attendees, all from a five-person core team in our first year as a studio.
Our approach
One project lead carried the brief across both halves. We built a single run-of-show that treated the day as two shows, not a conference-then-afterparty. The scientific programme closed with a visual handoff into the gala, same stage, different lighting palette.
We also insisted on speaker rehearsals for both halves. The CME moderators rehearsed their transitions. So did the award presenters. Nothing was left for the day itself.
The execution
Day 1 was inaugural flows plus two parallel scientific tracks. Day 2 ran four tracks in morning, master plenary after lunch, and the gala from 7pm with the TMOA Excellence Awards.
Our production stack covered both: line array + stage monitors for the keynote hall, plus the gala ballroom which we lit with a purple-to-amber sweep timed to the first awardee's walk-up.
Content crew shot all tracks with eight-camera coverage, delivered an aftermovie within a week, and a stills library within three days. For every session that needed CME accreditation, we captured timestamped attendance in a shared sheet that the secretariat downloaded the next morning.
The outcome
Five years of repeat partnership. Post-event NPS above 9 every year. Scientific committee wrote the run-of-show into their own handbook. The award for best session moderator is now named after the floor director we send every year.
