Sensix Communications and Events

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Sensix works its magic
The Gazette, Montreal, Monday, September 6, 1999
Fast makeover of Palais bunker into Viennese ballroom wowed Microsoft execs

When Microsoft wanted to wow 3,500 high-tech geeks at its 1996 Global Summit, it didn't turn to L.A. or New York in search of talent.

Microsoft tapped Michael Caplan, 43, president and creative director of Sensix Communications and Events Inc. The Montreal company swept into the Palais des Congrès and, in less than four hours, transformed its bunker-like confines from meeting room to sumptuous Viennese ballroom, complete with music, lighting effects and huge moving images.

Microsoft's sales and marketing troops left the annual confab not just jazzed about the products they sell, they were pumped about the company.

"That's our goal to engage all the senses and provide an experience that creates emotion," Caplan said. The company's name plays on the words "sixth sense," he added.

This year, the company won top prize from the Canadian Event Planning Association for logistical excellence, for its handling of a Bell Mobility awards dinner, mounted here and a week later in Toronto.

50 to 100 events
Logistics are no small concern for organizers who rely on faxes, E-mails and phone calls to talk to one another, and work in venues to which they have no access until hours before their events.

Sensix was born 20 years ago as Michael Caplan Entertainment, a one-man deejay outfit that Caplan ran while attending McGill University. Later, he began organizing private parties, before moving into the world of corporate events.

This year, Sensix will organize between 50 and 100 events in Montreal and across North America. The company has a permanent staff of nine, but its ranks can swell to more than 100 with the addition of casual and contractual workers such as writers, actors, singers, musicians, lighting designers, set decorators and waiters needed to mount an event.

"We take all calls," Caplan said when asked how much he charges to mount an event. "We can establish pretty quickly what we can do within a budget."

The Microsoft contract was a turning point for the event-management company. It was there that Caplan and his team first used a bit of high-tech gimmickry called Megaprojection™, the world's largest moving-picture projector. Megaprojection™ made it possible to turn the 30-foot-high concrete walls of the Palais des Congrès into those of a gilt-trimmed ballroom.

Sensix has gone on to create similar magic for corporate clients like Gillette Canada, Nortel Networks and Bell Mobility. And it has taken its show on the road.

Last winter, Tourism Montreal hired Caplan's crew to woo 150 convention-planners in Chicago, in an effort to lure their business here. Sensix rented a nightclub and created Café Flambé, a one-night-only restaurant. Guests ate gourmet fare in a "dine around," as a changing tapestry of Montreal images - its street life, architecture and people - was projected on the walls around them.

"People visited Montreal without ever leaving their seats in Chicago," Caplan said.

Increasingly, Sensix finds itself competing with companies from all over North America. Caplan has met with people at Merv Griffin Productions, a major producer of live entertainment, and is working on breaking into Las Vegas, North America's biggest convention city.

It has a bid in now with the city of Los Angeles to create a millennium event on New Year's Eve. Caplan won't disclose what he has up his sleeve, except to say that it involves projecting images on the HOLLYWOOD sign.

"We use Megaprojection™ to differentiate ourselves from our competitors," Caplan said.

Event planning is more than just party and meeting planning. Companies that want to communicate with their clients and employees can't just prop the CEO up behind a podium and let him drone on. A party has to be more than just canned music in a sterile ballroom.

"If you want to reach people, you have to give them something memorable. I call it the UBR effect. You have a message that you want them to understand, believe and remember," Caplan said.

Sometimes that means creating a buzz at a corporate gala by having sports heroes like Paul Henderson and Vladislav Tretiak appear.

Sometimes it means turning a banquet into a medieval feast. Sometimes it means hiring a Tina Turner impersonator to sing Simply the Best during an awards ceremony.

"Whatever it takes to make our clients' dream real, we'll do it," Caplan said.

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