No. 02 · Expedia Group · Brand experience + employee experience
Moving 4,000 people without making it feel like a move.
When I joined Expedia Group, plans were already well underway to move 4,000 employees from Bellevue into a new waterfront headquarters in Seattle. I had roughly 3–4 months to build the experience strategy and be ready to execute it.
And this wasn't one move-in day. Groups of roughly 100–800 employees would move every week from October through March. New commute. New neighborhood. New headquarters. New ways of working. New routines.
The communications campaign was already underway. What was missing was the experience.
My job became turning a complicated workplace transition into one cohesive experiential campaign that would prepare people for the change, create moments of intentional connection, make arrival feel special, and help a new HQ and new way of working start to feel like theirs.
RoleExperience Strategy · Creative Direction · Agency Leadership · Brand Experience · Employee Engagement
Years2019–2020
The experience strategy
Before. Arrival. Everyday.
We built the campaign around the full employee journey. Everything had to connect, from the first piece of education months before the move to what happened when employees walked through the doors to how the brand and experience continued to show up once the headquarters became their everyday workplace.
01 · Before
Educate + build confidence
Before anyone moved, we had to make the unknown feel manageable. What would my commute look like? Where am I sitting? How does hot-desking work? What do I need to do before I leave Bellevue? What will be different? Events, communications and experiences helped employees understand what was coming, prepare for the transition and begin building excitement for the new HQ.
02 · Arrival
Create the experience
Then came Welcome Week: the moment information became experience. Welcome teams, events, branded moments, campus exploration, signage, social activations, swag, a branded gift card to explore the food options on campus, and unexpected touches were designed as one connected journey. Together, they helped employees explore the new headquarters, create moments of intentional connection, understand how to use the space, and begin immersing themselves in the new culture.
03 · Everyday
Make the new HQ theirs
The experience couldn’t end after day one. We intentionally designed pieces employees would continue using as they settled into new routines, from tools that helped them navigate the headquarters to branded items created specifically around the new way they would work.
It wasn't three separate programs. It was one cohesive experiential campaign designed around how people actually move through change.
The challenge
One campaign. 4,000 employees. Months of arrivals.
3–4 months
To build the strategy and be ready to execute
4,000
Employees moving to the new Seattle headquarters
100–800
Employees arriving in each weekly wave
Oct → Mar
A move happening over months, not one day
The experience had to be cohesive enough to feel like one Expedia Group campaign, flexible enough to work for dramatically different group sizes, and repeatable enough to deliver week after week without losing what made it feel special or the opportunities for intentional connection.
Welcome Week
A hundred little things that made a big change feel easier.
Welcome Week wasn’t a single event. It was an ecosystem of events, information, connection moments, brand, social activations and useful tools designed to help employees immerse themselves in the headquarters, the culture and their new way of working.
The experience
Beyond the HQ
We weren't just moving into Seattle. Expedia Group was showing up in Seattle.
This was a new headquarters for 4,000 employees, but it was also an opportunity to establish a stronger physical presence for Expedia Group in a city synonymous with some of the world’s biggest technology companies. The waterfront HQ itself made a statement. Our opportunity was to extend that beyond the building. We designed branded pieces people would actually want to carry, wear and use, allowing the Expedia Group brand to travel with employees onto buses, ferries, sidewalks, coffee shops and neighborhoods across Seattle.
The employee experience became brand awareness.
Designed to stick around
If we were going to make something, it needed a reason to exist.
Employees were moving from assigned desks to a hot-desk model, so the tote wasn’t just a welcome gift. It gave them something useful for carrying their workspace to and from their locker each day. The welcome guide unfolded into a full campus map. The branded gift card encouraged employees to explore the food options on campus. The materials reflected the sustainability story of the new headquarters. The identity was designed to live across physical, digital and environmental touchpoints.
Every piece had a job to do.
Why it mattered
A new headquarters was a signal of where Expedia Group was going next.
This wasn’t simply 4,000 employees changing offices. Expedia Group was creating a new home in Seattle, changing how its people worked and establishing a more visible presence alongside the city’s biggest technology companies. The experience needed to do more than make move-in run smoothly. It needed to help employees believe in the change, understand how to thrive in a completely different environment, create meaningful connection with one another and feel proud of the company they were walking into. So we treated the move as a brand experience, not a logistics exercise. We connected education, events, connection moments, design, culture and brand into one journey that started before employees ever arrived and continued long after Welcome Week was over.
Because the opportunity wasn’t just to get 4,000 people into a new building. It was to help 4,000 people make it theirs, and let Seattle know Expedia Group was here.
Built withExperience strategy and program lead: Ali Hooks · Brand leadership: Gillian O'Connell · Identity and design: Angela Watterson, Kristen Bartcheski · Experiential partner: Opus Agency