TEDxWellington is the city’s flagship ideas event, an independently organised TED event held annually in New Zealand’s creative capital. Obvious was named the official media partner in 2019, and has been involved with TEDxWellington in some form ever since (Ciaran Jack, our founder, now co-organises the event and leads its marketing communications).

TEDxWellington 2019 Chance theme key visual

The Brief

The 2019 event, held at Te Auaha (the New Zealand Institute of Creativity), was the fourth TEDxWellington and the team had set themselves a high bar: a fourth consecutive sell-out, with a more crowded events landscape and limited budget. The theme, settled early in the year, was Chance. Obvious was asked to set the creative direction for the brand campaign and produce the assets that would carry it from announcement to event night.

The Strategic Idea

The strategic move was to take “chance” beyond a poster slogan and turn it into a participation mechanic. We made two decisions that shaped the rest of the campaign.

The Theme Reveal

The campaign opened with a theme-announcement film that played out two parallel storylines, separated and unaware of each other, until the moment they collide and the theme is revealed at the roll of a dice. The film was designed to feel like a piece of short cinema rather than a corporate teaser, and to seed the visual language Boggle, randomness, narrative collision that would carry across every later asset.

TEDxWellington 2019 social campaign assets

Speaker Announcement Films

In partnership with Te Auaha’s production studio, Obvious shot and produced the speaker announcement films and the individual speaker walk-on videos used on the night. A single hero film introduced the lineup; individual edits were used through ticket-registration and on the official TEDxWellington YouTube channel after the event.

The Sell-Out

TEDxWellington 2019 was the event’s fourth consecutive sell-out, supported by an end-to-end campaign produced inside a not-for-profit budget. The campaign system established here, theme reveal film, lottery registration, speaker announcement series, has shaped TEDxWellington’s creative approach in the years since, evolving as Ciaran moved from media partner into a co-organising role.

“Obvious crafted a fantastic brand video to introduce the theme of TEDxWellington 2019, and laid down the creative benchmark for the rest of the team to follow. On top of this they did an amazing job on the speaker photos and walk-on videos for the event, and covered the day perfectly. A delight to work with, and a team that delivered above and beyond expectation.”

DK Wood, Licence Holder, TEDxWellington

Why This Mattered

Brand work for not-for-profit cultural events is a particular discipline. The audience is sophisticated. The budget is tight. The brief has to deliver across film, photography, social and live experience. The TEDxWellington 2019 campaign is a useful reference for how Obvious approaches that brief: a single strategic idea expressed consistently across every touchpoint, the production discipline to make it look like a single piece of work, and the long-game thinking to make sure the system is built to be reused.

The partnership has continued. Subsequent TEDxWellington events, including the 2024 edition that played to a 1,500-seat audience, build on the same creative foundation. For more on how we think about long-cycle creative systems, see our perspective on why visual consistency outperforms visual cleverness.

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