Index
Case
03 of 05
Xeneta
2022 to 2024
Xeneta Summit
Three years designing the company\’s flagship customer event, and the brand moment that carries the most weight.
Role
Brand & Design Manager. Creative direction across event identity, stage, keynotes and film.
Context
Flagship customer event, three editions.
With
Events, marketing, internal & external speakers.
Year
2023 to 2026
What happens in the room keeps working long after it.
Freight runs on relationships. Deals are built over years of knowing the people on the other side, which is what makes in-person events worth the cost. The Summit is where customers and prospects network with their peers, talk to the experts, analysts, and see the brand up close for two days, and that makes it the most concentrated brand-building we do all year. It has influenced deals, and the conversations carry on long after the two days are over.
XENETA SUMMIT BEFORE
Context & challenge
A well-liked event that was not doing brand work
The Summit was already valued by the people who attended. It was a smaller gathering, reviewed well as a place to talk to other freight professionals in a closed setting without much vendors selling at them. The content and the conversations were the value.
What it was not doing was building the brand. The branding was simple, the format followed industry convention, and the company was in the middle of a move upmarket that the event did not yet reflect.
The challenge for the brand
Demonstrate the positioning to the people in the room, and produce enough visible evidence of it to create FOMO from the people who were not.
My role
Creative direction across three editions, covering event identity, stage, keynote design and launch films. I worked with the events team and organisers, and with the CEO, CMO and CPO to shape their keynote content into something a room could follow. I directed the production house, AV and stage suppliers, and print.
Approach
Design it as an exciting freighttech event, not just another conference
Freight is a tight-knit community. People know each other, move between the same companies, and form their view of a supplier through peers as much as through marketing. That makes an event the fastest reputation-building channel available to us, and production quality a commercial decision rather than a cosmetic one.
Everything a customer sees over those two days is evidence. If the company claims to be the authority in the category, the stage, the print, the films and the presentations all have to hold that standard, because a room full of people judging you up close will notice anything that does not.
The reference point was deliberately not the industry. Freight conferences are largely static slide presentations of data. We designed the Summit closer to a tech company launch, with product keynotes, launch films, stands and a programme with pace. Xeneta sells itself as a tech company operating in freight, and the Summit is the only place customers experience the company, our people, rather than the product alone.
OUR FIRST EVER PRODUCT KEYNOTE IN 2023
VIDEO OPENING in curved theater
VIDEO OPENING in curved theater
XENETA SUMMIT 2023
Considerations
The insight is the draw. People come for the analysts and the market read, so the keynotes and presentations carry the event. Every design decision had to serve how that data lands in a room rather than compete with it.
High quality visuals across the event. Customers see the brand at close range for two days, across stage, print, screen, signage and merchandise. A weak detail anywhere undercuts the authority the rest of the event is arguing for.
The room is the product. The value is in conversations and direct access to the analysts, so nothing in the design could get in the way of that.
Design decisions
Keynotes built with the executives, not handed to them. Designed closer to a product keynote than a corporate deck. Every chart legible from the back of the room, the insight carried by the visual rather than narrated around it, and animation timed to the speaker rather than running underneath them.
Design for a theatre. Moving into a theatre venue was a collective decision. What I owned was making it count. A raked auditorium and a long-format screen change what is possible on stage, so the content was rebuilt for full-width, full-screen presentation rather than adapted from slides designed for a function room.
Hype videos before keynote sessions. Short films opening each session, built for the theatre screen at full scale. They set the pace of the programme and gave every session a lift before a word was spoken, which is what kept a two-day agenda feeling like an event rather than a schedule.
XENETA SUMMIT 2024 / 25
PRODUCT KEYNOTE HYPE VIDEO
BRAND VIDEO LAUNCH
EXAMPLE PRODUCT VIDEOS USED FOR KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
What they said
"It was mind-blowing to see how Xeneta did accelerate and grow to an absolute industry leader. Compared to 2022 the team did more than double the number of attendees to +500 in an absolutely amazing theatre style location."
Attendee, Xeneta Summit
"Xeneta, thank you for a great summit 2023 in Amsterdam. You have set the bar very high for 2024 and I am looking forward to being part of it."
Attendee, Xeneta Summit
"Easily the most valuable two days in our calendar. I left with a clear view of where the market is heading and the data to back up every decision."
Attendee, Xeneta Summit
How it evolved
Where it is now
By 2024 the Summit runs as an exclusive freightech and market insights event rather than an industry conference: a theatre venue, product keynotes designed to the speaker, launch films, product booths and insight packed agenda. The visual identity carries across stage, print, screen and environment as one system rather than branding applied to a venue. Attendance more than doubled between 2022 and to this date, and the format that produced it is now the standing template rather than a one-year experiment.
Results
The Summit is now one of the strongest brand-building moments at Xeneta. It generates organic buzz on LinkedIn from attendees rather than from us, and the insight videos and stage design have become something customers look forward to and ask about ahead of each edition.
It does commercial work too. In a community this tight, a premium room with peers in it and direct access to the analysts is a real touchpoint for late-stage prospects, and it has helped move deals that were already close. Most of that lands after everyone has gone home.
Attendees have significantly increased to date
700+
LinkedIn coverage generated by attendees, unprompted
Insight videos and stage design now expected each year
An effective touchpoint for moving prospects already close to a decision
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