Conference Production
L'Oréal Professional
Three brands. Three stages. Three days. The annual PPD conference for 500 international delegates at the InterContinental London The O2.
- Venue
- InterContinental The O2
- Delegates
- 500
- Brands
- 3 (L’Oréal, Matrix, Kérastase)
- Duration
- 4 days
- Role
- Full In-House Production
The story
A project worth looking at properly.
The L'Oréal PPD Conference brings together the three pillars of L'Oréal's Professional Products Division for an annual gathering of international delegates: L'Oréal Professionnel, Kérastase and Matrix. Each brand has its own audience, product narrative and visual identity. The brief was to give each one its dedicated stage and dedicated technical production, then bring them back together into a single shared evening programme.
The conference ran for four days at the InterContinental London The O2: rigging and load-in across both halls, a plenary session for the full 500-delegate audience on the main stage, then a breakout day with three concurrent stages running parallel content for each brand. Every element was designed, built and operated in house.
Production scope
Designed. Built. Delivered.
The production disciplines brought together for this project.
LED Production
A 676-panel LED matrix across three independent stages: 338 ESD Lumen Dazzle 3.9mm on the main L’Oréal stage, plus 183 and 155 Unilumin 2.6mm panels for Matrix and Kérastase, each pixel-mapped to native content.
Video Processing
A Barco E2 with EC50 control on the main stage, fed by two redundant Watchout servers and a three-camera ATEM IMAG cut, with two Barco S3 processors driving the Day 2 breakout stages.
Sound Design
A fully flown d&b Y-Series system designed in ArrayCalc, DGUV-17 rigging compliant at 22% of rated load, with separate scaled rigs for each breakout room.
Lighting Production
62 intelligent moving heads on the main truss (Robin Pointe, LEDBeam 150, VLZ Spot, Alpha Wash 700) run on grandMA, delivering five distinct looks from keynote wash to full DJ show.
Media Servers
Watchout media servers on the main stage and Milumin servers on the breakout stages, with all background plates, brand idents and VTs rendered for instant, native playback.
Overnight Turnaround
One main hall struck and three separate stages rebuilt, lit and patched in a five-hour overnight window between Day 1 and Day 2.
The Overnight Rebuild
From one stage to three, between 1am and 6am
Day 1 finished at 1am after the DJ party. Day 2 had to start at 7am with rehearsals on three completely different stages. That gave the Kudos AV crew a five-hour window to dismantle one production and build three: the 338-panel LED matrix came down, the flown sound array was lowered and split into three smaller hangs, the Barco E2 was replaced with two Barco S3 processors, and the lighting truss was re-focused and re-programmed for three new room layouts.
By 6am all three stages were lit, focused and patched. By 7am the rehearsal crews were running their content. By 8.30am the delegates were walking in for breakout day. A turnaround at this scale, with no margin to fix it in the morning, is the test of an in-house crew that has done it before.
Project gallery
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Real project photography from the finished event.
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