General Motors Forward 2025, NYC

OneOneFour Productions: Strategic Production Leadership

Client: MAS | Final Stakeholder: General Motors (C-Suite Global Media Event)

The Challenge

GM Forward needed to be an event to reposition General Motors as a technology brand, not just a car company. We needed to develop stage content that told this story of the evolution through a future forward lens across GM’s AI, Autonomous Vehicle, Home Energy, and Battery departments. In addition to the stage show we were tasked with creating four demos in the room for press to interact with to help them see and experience this message.

Added to the initial scope was also a request to livestream a secondary show back to General Motors HQ in Detroit for their earnings call where tens of thousands of employees would join to hear financial updates directly from the companies top leaders.

GM Forward has zero-margin for error as a technology reveal for CEO Mary Barra and the global press. The goal was to re-introduce GM’s future in AI and Autonomy—an ambitious vision that required an unbreakable execution plan.

The Output

Using the narrative GM built, we pulled together a compelling visual story on stage that was future facing and had the highest levels of leadership, CEO Mary Barra, President Mark Reuss, and Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson there to tell it. We also developed four demos; one of which was a simulation we created to showcase the technology in GM’s autonomous vehicle (Camera, Lidar, & Radar). This ran across 7 75” monitors that were built into a curved 30’ wall that made you feel like you were immersed in the simulation. We integrated the GM Home Energy System into a high-traffic functional environment, featuring a custom-built hospitality station designed to demonstrate the technology in a real-world context. The SDV demo showcased the simplicity of the future by showing how much technology has been paired down compared to SDV tech just a short while ago. Lastly our battery demo was a real battery from the GM performance and racing center that was retro fitted with lighting to highlight critical components as well as an acrylic surround for the cart it sat on. There was an accompanying 3D video we also developed and animated that ran in tandem with this setup.

The Work

I was engaged as the Executive Production Lead to provide senior-level oversight across the entire production ecosystem; AV & technical, development of demos in physical form as well as content dev, scenic fabrication and technology integration. I acted as the bridge between GM’s internal technology teams (AI, Battery, and Autonomous Vehicles) and our various partners, production and creative teams. I provided the senior-level oversight necessary to ensure the highest standard of delivery.

• Executing the Multi-Format Global Reveal: Managed and oversaw the technical architecture for the main stage show and a subsequent earnings livestream to Detroit HQ, ensuring 100% technical continuity for GM CEO Mary Barra and President Mark Reuss’s corporate earnings call.

• Leading High-Fidelity Technical Simulations: Managed the content development of a 30-foot immersive AV simulation wall, integrating seven high-resolution displays to accurately visualize GM’s autonomous sensor data (Lidar, Radar, and Camera).

• Directing Hardware-to-Experience Integration: Oversaw the transition of proprietary technology from GM’s engineering centers into public-facing exhibits, including the retrofitting of high-performance battery components and the synchronization of custom animated content.

• Orchestrating the Show-to-Demo Transition: Managed the logistical flow and technical hand-off between the high-spec stage presentation and four interactive demo environments, ensuring a seamless experience for the world's most influential media.

The Result

When the doors opened, press was delighted, programming was executed perfectly, the content ran as expected and rehearsed. We successfully protected a huge media moment for GM by ensuring the technology worked perfectly and the story remained the focus. The result was a flawless, enterprise-scale event that proved GM’s future vision was backed by a reality of execution. Senior leaders were so impressed with the builds and integration of content immediate conversations about how to reuse elements at additional productions were kicked off.