AKA Backflip’s First Pilgrimage: The National Eucharistic Congress

“What if we got a booth for the National Eucharistic Congress?”

That idea floated from the mouth of my ever-enthusiastic business partner, Ryan Freng, a few months before the congress dates on July 17 to July 21. Throughout 2024, we’d been bringing more focus to expanding our Christian and Catholic work, and the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress, last held in 1941, seemed to be a pretty great “once-in-every-83-years” opportunity. Sure, we’d never exhibited in a booth like this before, and yeah, we only had a few weeks to pull it all together… but I guess we should all know by now that that’s exactly the kind of thing we do at Backflip. We make awesome!

The team sprung into action and we quickly learned there were no more booths available for exhibiting…

No matter. Ryan, Scott, and I knew that we could make valuable connections just by attending and so accommodations and travel plans got underway.

This post may end up including a lot of thanks and praise to Ryan Freng, which he should very much not let go to his head, but you should very much understand is what makes him such an incredible leader and asset to our team.

I don’t think it was more than a few days later that Ryan shared an update. A vendor had canceled and there was now an open booth that we could sponsor. What I had dismissed as a forgone opportunity, Ryan had pursued like a dog on a rabbit. Seriously… don’t mention an idea to this guy unless you’re ready for it to become a reality.

Ok! Subtract one week from our aforementioned tight timeline and we were ready to launch into a plan to develop and design a vendor booth – complete with stickers, one pagers, signage, video displays, and a backdrop.

The first step in this process was assembling a mock booth to scale in our studio so we could understand the 10×10 space. Luke rigged up some curtains, and we got to work playing with the space. Per usual, our ideas were bigger than our space but constraints tend to lead to the best creative ideas. Hannah got to work designing the physical signage while Max and Alexis edited custom demo reels for our two screens. Luke began work on a physical sign element that would add a really cool 3D element to our signage. Our vision for the booth was to design a primarily Backflip-themed aesthetic but to reserve a small portion of the display for our featured project: Dare to Believe.

Check out the progression of the creative assets!

We’ll go ahead and skip over the details of arranging and rearranging the booth and reimagining layout multiple times. Eventually, our sweet custom backdrop arrived along with table signs, stickers, one-pagers, and… oh yeah, more t-shirts than you could shake a stick at (you can get your very own ‘What if it was all true’ shirt here)! We managed to load all of our booth materials into 2 vehicles and headed for Indy.

Setting up the booth at the expo center was very much like any other production we work on. You plan and prepare, bring everything you think you’ll need, but inevitably, you’ll run into some things you need to solve creatively on the spot. At one of her first Backflip shoots, Alexis observed, “So, production is really just like… constant problem-solving.” It was an accurate description. A skilled and experienced production team doesn’t just have the simple knowhow for a standard production. They are skilled at thinking on their feet and coming up with creative solutions on a tight schedule with a variety of constraints.

The biggest adjustment we made on the fly was the location of our backdrop. When we arrived at the expo center, we discovered that our booth was on a corner (which we knew) near the bathrooms and the outer wall (which we did not know). We had conceived of the booth in one orientation, with the main backdrop and sign on the left side, but when set up in the actual location, this meant our sign was aimed at the back wall. I mentioned this fact to Ryan but then dismissed it as potentially unnecessary. We had already set up the booth, and this change would involve additional work to reset things. Deep down, I knew Ryan would probably say, “Let’s do it!” Again, this is why you want him on your team. He’s always going to pursue the best option.

One complicated backdrop move later (Remember Luke’s 3D sign? It was actually a magnetic rig to hold the sign from our front office onto the vinyl backdrop.) and we had our final setup for the booth.

The opening of the conference finally arrived and the flood of conference attendees began to fill the expo center. We had a prize wheel at the booth, which proved very popular. Visitors to the booth could spin for a chance to win candy, sunglasses, a hat, or one of our Dare to Believe shirts. Two additional bonus swag items came from my (John’s) wife, Amanda. She created a linocut block print to use on T-shirts and some frameable prints.

One of the great unexpected experiences at the booth was having so many great conversations with individuals that were excited about what we do. Maybe this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but sometimes doing work in sales can be exhausting because of the rejections or just the lack of interest from leads that aren’t a fit. I suppose it makes sense that while running a creative marketing and video production booth at a conference, we would be approached by people who are interested in those things!

We also had an incredible response to our Dare to Believe series promotion. The T-shirts were only available on our prize wheel, but after four days of being asked if the shirts were for sale, we decided to do something about it. In the week following the conference, Ryan spun up a shop so that people could purchase the shirts from us after the fact.

The final feature of our booth was the $1500 marketing assessment giveaway. Entrants were able to sign up on a web form, sharing some business details and goals, and then we selected winners at the end of the conference. We were super happy to award 3 winners, one of which was our booth neighbor, Floriani, a men’s vocal ensemble dedicated to serving the Church and saving the culture through the beauty of sacred music.

My experience of the conference itself is interesting to think about. We were far busier than I imagined. Running the booth, although it was only open from 12 to 6, was exhausting physically and mentally. Perhaps seasoned booth exhibitors know this, but the countless engaged conversations throughout the day are enough to drain the social energy of even an enthusiastic extrovert. So when it came to the actual events of the congress, we only attended a few.

Scott and I made it to the opening procession and adoration in the Lucas Oil stadium. That was an incredible experience to take in… 50,000 people in silent adoration as the Eucharist took the center stage! We also made it as a group to a talk by Fr. Mike Schmitz and then later a great intimate live viewing of The Pillar podcast. The highlight for me was the Friday evening penance and healing service.

Whenever we’re working an event, the experience is different. It’s one of the reasons we try not to do work for friends’ weddings. If we’re working, then we’re working. If we’re attending, well that’s a different thing. But one of the cool reflections that came out of the week for me was the realization that what we had really done was take not just ourselves but our whole business on a pilgrimage. We followed a plan, inspired by faith and prayer, to make an effort to connect with a wider network of Catholic businesses and organizations that we haven’t had the chance to meet in our usual local market. Mostly, running the booth was work, but we had moments throughout the week that allowed us to participate more fully.

For my part, I know I came back from the week refreshed and with a renewed sense of gratitude for the Eucharist. But I also have great hope for the future of our business. Backflip just went on its first pilgrimage and the inspirations and insights from it are sure to shape the next phase of the company in the months and years ahead.

At least if Ryan has anything to say about it…