PGE & Portland Pride sponsorship
Bringing an energy company to Pride in 2022
Role: Lead Design, Art Direction, Project Management and Strategy
As lead designer at Portland General Electric (PGE), I was responsible for the ideation, concepting and execution of our brand activation at the Portland Pride Festival. This included the event theme, 12’ wide coloring wall mural custom illustration, shirt and tote artwork, 3D LED backlit custom sign artwork, interior decor and overall environmental design, as well as art directing the interior and exterior signage.
Not-so-tiny house party
PGE has been a long time participant in the Portland Pride Parade, but 2022 was the first year they decided to be a big sponsor in the Pride Festival as well. With a newly built all-electric tiny home in tow, we showed up for our customers in a way that was both playful and memorable.
The custom built 24’ all electric tiny home showcased the most efficient and easiest ways to go electric in your own home, but for Portland Pride we wanted to make sure we showed up first for the community. Leading with fun, the Tiny House Party became our activation’s theme.
We further refined the Tiny House Party theme to a Golden Girls-meets-retro Palm Springs aesthetic. With the endless onslaught of anti-trans bills and the normalization of anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, we knew we wanted to create a light and playful environment for queer joy.
Our tagline, “Love is an Oregon kind of energy” — a riff on PGE’s current brand campaign “An Oregon kind of energy” — became our uniting rallying cry. This message appeared throughout the event promotion, the activation space and in our marketing.
The 6x12’ coloring wall mural invited folks to share a moment with each other and sign their names or write encouraging notes of love and support. It became a moment of connection in a weekend full of celebrations.
From Mural to reality
We leaned on the collaborative ideating tool Mural to moodboard and rough out our event space and flow. The tiny house was going to take up a chunk of the square footage available, but we filled the rest of the event with timeless rattan lounge spaces — one of the only spaces in the waterfront festival for visitors to sit down, the 6x12’ interactive coloring mural and a small business partner live screen printing a custom designed tote bag that fundraised for queer youth housing. To keep the party energy going, we decorated the inside of the tiny house with miles of mylar fringe and honeycomb decor.
“ My highlight of Pride was the PGE tiny house — I loved the whole vibe, the shirt, the tote bag, a place to relax! I can tell that you guys really thought this through and had fun!”
Joanna, PGE customer
Results from our intercept survey
As folks exited the all electric home, we captured a few sentiments with a simple, 3 question intercept survey to gauge how people felt about the experience.
Did you have fun? 1-5 stars, not much fun to tons of fun: We got 4.9 stars, which means that most folks had TONS OF FUN (91%)!
Would you visit us if we did this again next year? Y/N: 97% said they would visit next year if we came back.
How do you feel about having companies like PGE at Pride? 1-5 not happy to very happy: This can be a touchy subject. There have been accusations of brands “rainbow washing” during Pride month by companies who don’t walk the talk. While we had 20% state that they were neutral, that's not a bad thing. Most of those who are neutral still had a great time and would come again, so the answer is more about a value structure than a reflection on us. Only 2% chose 1-2 (not happy) and 79% chose a 4-5 (happy-very happy). Overall 98% were neutral-very happy.
Partnering with Black-owned and local small businesses
With Portland Pride 2022 falling on the same weekend of Juneteenth, we wanted to make sure we were celebrating the black community at Pride too. We partnered with Umbrella Ink, a local black-owned small business that came to the event and screen printed totes with our Love is an Oregon kind of energy design. All of the decor inside the house was purchased from ECOVIBE, a black-owned small business and PGE customer.
Our shirts and all printed materials were with Oregon-based businesses as well, helping PGE stay true to their Oregon kind of energy ethos. The shirt design was so popular it’s going to be used as an employee-run fundraiser for the LGBTQIA+ Employee Business Resource Group.
LED sign collaboration with Portland artist Jen Fuller
Jen Fuller is a Portland-based sculpture artist who knows how to make almost any idea happen. We partnered together on a 3D backlit LED custom sign for the Pride activation and her ingenuity and connections made it happen with a tight turnaround and budget.
