Thumbtack's Annual Values Awards

Thumbtack's Values Awards is the most anticipated employee event of the year. It celebrates eight company values, recognizes individual impact, and sets the cultural tone for the year ahead. The goal of the program is to recognize the impact of exceptional individuals and to build genuine pride for company culture. I owned the communications strategy and show production from the first planning meeting through the live virtual broadcast, seven months of sustained work across every channel: a multi-week nominations campaign, a selection committee process, a pre-show build, and a fully scripted live show.

The newsroom theme was developed collaboratively with a small team. Once the concept was set, I owned all of the communications and language built around it, including every piece of communication across channels, including scripting. The show itself included a comedic pre-show opening segment and tongue-in-cheek commercials broadcast throughout. I also produced the actual show, coordinating leadership and past winner recordings, interstitial segments, and managing the production timeline through a process where winner names were not confirmed until the day before filming.

The theme gave every piece of the seven-month campaign a consistent creative foundation. Our newsroom created a world with its own language and energy that supported eight values and 450 nominations. The pre-nominations campaign led with past winner voices and treated employees as protagonists before they were audience members. That drove a 29% increase in nominations year over year. On AI in production: I used AI to develop the commercial segments woven into the show as breaks between awards. Written in the newsroom voice, they added production value and gave the show a consistent comedic throughline. It was one of the first times I used AI as a creative production tool, and it worked.

Due to updates to the nomination committee's selections, the finalist slate was not confirmed until the day prior to filming. The script I wrote had placeholder names and metrics that had to be updated last minute without requiring a full rewrite. That structural decision created a manageable solution. The script was easily approved and production remained on time.

A majority of nominations came in the final week of the window. This year we're aligning the nominations cycle more closely with our performance review cycle, so employees have their teammates' contributions top of mind when they nominate.

Culture moments work when employees feel like they are part of the story. Moments of levity and surprise keep employees' attention and make them want to be a part of something bigger. The more we could grab attention early, the better the impact of the final program.