Vitality Insurance
Why: Employee Rewards and Recognition
location: London, UK
industry: Insurance
The Challenge
Vitality’s Star Awards recognises the people who truly live the company values.
Peer nominated. Over 2,000 nominations. Just 60 places.
A seat on this experience is earned – and highly coveted.
Our brief was clear: create a London-based reward experience worthy of that belief.
The deeper challenge; how do you bring disruptive thinking to life inside a professional services organisation, without it feeling forced?
The answer? A creative thread strong enough to hold the whole experience together, and light enough to feel like fun. Here is it: Dare To Disrupt.
"Lisa and our team have worked together for a few years now and I can confidently say that I have never worked with a more creative, professional and organised person.
Her attention to detail and perseverance in achieving brilliance and meeting our very steep strategic aspirations while staying calm is incredible and unmatched."
The theatre choice was Guys and Dolls at The Bridge Theatre, a production known for its moving stage and immersive format.
From there we built a unifying theme: Dare to Disrupt and designed a 2-day experience to bring the idea of disruption to life.
Accommodation: The Dixon Hotel. A former prison transformed into a boutique hotel.
Shakespeare’s Globe. Walking in the footsteps of one of history’s great cultural disruptors.
Creative workshops near London Bridge: Each workshop connected back to our theme to create a consistent narrative without feeling heavy-handed.
- Jackson Pollock-inspired art
- Donut making at Bread Ahead
- Pyrography
The evening required precision timing.
- Awards ceremony at The Ivy.
- Three-course dinner.
- Transfer to Guys and Dolls.
Timings were impossibly tight. Rather than compressing the schedule, we restructured it.
Keeping with our disruptive theme, we decided to disrupt the dinner; with the show.
Guests returned to The Ivy after the performance for dessert and drinks where each person’s favourite cocktail already waiting.
A beautiful end to the evening.
On day two we flipped the energy completely.
After the glamour, perspective.
At Stave Hill Conservation Centre, guests contributed to ongoing conservation work, part of a long-standing legacy within the programme.
- Making birdboxes
- Clearing woodland
- Giving back to the community.
This element remains consistent year on year. It reinforces continuity, grounds the experience and boosts individual and team wellbeing and morale.
When people step outside the familiar, they create space for new ideas. That spirit of disruption was exactly what this experience set out to spark.
TWC has delivered Vitality’s Star Awards since 2016. Each year, the anticipation builds and the opportunity to earn a seat on the trip drives behaviour across the wider business.
Vitality has proven that when reward is aligned with values, culture strengthens, and great events happen when someone is brave enough to think differently.
If you’re ready to raise the bar on your next leadership conference or reward experience, we’d love to talk.
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I’ve spent 30 years designing transformative events. The events are unique, the science behind them remains the same. I use 7 trusted frameworks to build every event. I've put them into a playbook.
