ONE BOOTH. THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. WE MADE IT SING.
BUILT TO SPEC BEFORE A SINGLE PERSON WALKED IN.
Before anyone stepped inside, the installation had to work as a piece of real construction — a full shower stall, tiled, plumbed, wired for sound and light, built to hold up under a full day of convention-hall foot traffic.
A SHOWER KARAOKE BOOTH, THE SIDE STAGE AT A SHOW WITH TIM MCGRAW AND CARRIE UNDERWOOD
This was early in my career, years before I held a creative director title — Walmart's 2008 Shareholders Meeting wasn't a boardroom. It was part business meeting, part concert — Tim McGraw, Jennifer Hudson, Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, and Journey all performed that same year, hosted by Queen Latifah, in front of thousands of associates and executives flying in from dozens of countries. Gillette needed a moment that could hold its own inside that scale, launching a new 2-in-1 product line to a room that had genuinely seen everything.
A ROCK CONCERT, BUILT INTO A SHOWER STALL.
Concept, design, and point on the build were mine: an interactive karaoke installation designed to feel like a concert stage inside a shower — an oversized microphone built directly into a body wash bottle, theatrical smoke, and a lighting rig pulled straight from real concert production.
I ran point across our in-house production team and the other teams involved. Most of the actual work happened in a basement production studio, not on the show floor — a big room with a computer-driven cutting table that cut out huge mockups, and the space to build large and work out details as they came up: the bottle mic, the fog machine, even a small disco ball, inspired by a colleague on the team who genuinely loved disco. Overhead, a camera rig mounted at showerhead height meant every participant's performance was shot from an angle nobody else at the event was using.
A MOCK AD, BUILT TO SELL THE FUTURE, NOT JUST THE PRODUCT.
The centerpiece visual — a showerhead-themed poster with next year's projected sales printed right into the layout — did two jobs. A pamphlet version sat on the table inside the booth for anyone who stopped by. The full poster circulated internally at Walmart and P&G's Arkansas offices, the same rooms where I sat for client meetings while living in the state. Not a result the campaign delivered — the pitch itself, put directly in front of the people deciding whether to believe it.
LET GO, AND THE ROOM FOLLOWS.
The whole build ran on one idea, not a product spec sheet: give people a reason to let their guard down, and the rest of the room follows.
EVERYONE WHO SANG WALKED OUT WITH PROOF.
A line formed outside the booth all day — the same way one would outside a karaoke bar, minus the alcohol. Every demographic at the event cycled through, pulled in by the music alone. I sang too. Every participant left with their own keepsake: a studio-quality audio track and video capture from the showerhead camera angle — something they wanted to keep, that also carried Gillette's name every time it got shared.
THE PITCH SPREAD ITSELF.
Retail executives who stepped into the booth walked out with something they actually wanted to share — turning one room at a shareholders meeting into word-of-mouth you could watch spread in real time.