Volume Up to 11: Breaking the Corporate Mold at Workday Rising

// The brief

In 2019, Collaborative Solutions was a boutique Workday consultancy competing against enterprise giants at Workday Rising. The challenge: stand out in a sea of polished blue-and-white corporate booths — but more importantly, tell the true story of the company's founders and why they built it the way they did.

// The story behind the story

Collaborative Solutions was founded by two people who found each other through music. That's not a metaphor — it's literally how the company started. The founders shared a deep love of rock and roll, and that spirit of creative rebellion, of showing up and playing hard, became the DNA of everything they built: a culture-first consultancy that prided itself on being the most human firm in the room.

The 2019 Workday Rising booth wasn't just a trade show activation. It was an opportunity to finally say the quiet part loud — to show the heart and soul behind the company's reputation, and let clients and prospects feel what it actually meant to work with Collaborative Solutions.

// The concept

Rather than mimicking the polished corporate look of competitors, we leaned fully into the founders' roots as rock musicians. Collaborative Solutions was positioned not as another vendor, but as the roadies and rockstars of Digital Transformation — the people who show up early, stay late, and make sure the show goes on.

We traded sterile white backdrops for a backstage club aesthetic — remixing the corporate palette with high-octane neon greens and purples against smoky grays. Every touchpoint reinforced the theme: a Rock Band gaming station where attendees could play alongside the team, a neon-lit customer appreciation party that felt like a concert afterparty, and copy written at the register of a setlist, not a spec sheet.

The experience gave long-term clients a moment of recognition — this is who we always knew you were — and gave new prospects a reason to remember the name.

// The result