TV-Themed Workplace Parody Show (“Data TV”)

Leading Creative Communications & Connective Experiences for a 190-person design team at Capital One, I spent years working with leadership to program and host each quarter’s All Hands meeting—the few occasions a year where the whole team comes together—originally in-person, then virtually with the pandemic—to hear leadership’s vision, business context, and share some cultural content I would create. But 2021 was an even harder year than 2020 for a lot of people, and by December, the team was burned out. The leadership team didn’t have the energy or time to pull together meaningful content, and the team had serious Zoom fatigue with all the other end-of-year meetings happening. It was suggested that we skip it altogether, but I felt strongly that we should have something to wrap up the year together.

I proposed an alternative to the traditional All Hands for the Data.xd team: Data TV, a 90-minute TV-themed parody show that consisted of a combination of twelve pre-recorded segments and live, interactive activities. In four weeks, I brainstormed segments, proposed a range of ways people on the team could contribute, filmed, edited, programmed, and hosted the event; collaborating with 40+ team members on the content and creating an experience that people could engage with on a spectrum of energy levels; encouraging people to either have it on in the background, like a TV show, or interact directly like a live studio audience. I worked with our admin, Kandace, to mail out custom TV-dinner themed snack packages with popcorn and an envelope that each person put under their chair at home for an Oprah-style prize giveaway at the end of the show. It was so fun and such a hit!

Segment Lineup

• Live weather reports from team members in each geographic location

• “Coming up!” Video teaser

• Planet Earth: Home Edition

• “Pure Working from Home Moods” compilation CD infomercial

• A Capital One Antiques Roadshow episode

• Modified 20/20 show intro that led into a live 20/20 style interview with our org’s VP

• A word from our sponsors: vintage Capital One commercials I found archived online

• Data.xd’s Leadership’s Got Talent! A talent show montage with the Leadership Team where I recorded each leader “performing” a talent (from singing and magic to not-blinking and folding a fitted sheet) and spliced in clips of judges reactions from old America’s Got Talent and X Factor episodes. 

• Video intro for Guesstures, LIVE! (Ian Soper won a pocket microscope during an Apprecia-spin one year, and started a tradition of uploading photos of magnified household items to Slack and asking the team to guess the texture. This was a live game show version of that Slack ritual)

• Doodling with Diana: An instructional doodling show from one of the team’s leaders

• Song parody music video: One of the singer songwriters on the team made a song parody about video calls. I created a music video to go along with it

• MS Paint-along: I edited down a Bob Ross episode into seven minutes, and people could either take an intermission, or use an MS Paint simulator to follow along. (The results were actually so lovely!)

• Recognition Game Show: A mega version of the Apprecia-spin, a monthly recognition ritual I developed and hosted, making sure every single person on the team was included in this round

• Oprah-style giveaway: I mailed envelopes in the snack package with instructions to put it under your desk chair before the call started. At the end, we had a “look under your seat” element for the end-of-year gift giveaway, as well as a charity donation in lieu of SWAG

• Buffer zone! (Blocked off calendar time so that people wouldn’t have to go straight into another meeting.)

Video Segments

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