When I arrived at the new office of Cloud Technology Partners, my first reaction was that I had somehow entered the wrong door. As soon as I walked through the main entrance, I was greeted with a giant booth with 18 dispensers filled with M&M's in 18 different colors.
The cloud computing consulting company, however, is not thinking about rebranding itself as a candy shop. The rainbow booth that greets visitors and employees illustrates the 18 steps of the Cloud adoption program, one of Cloud Technology Partners’ flagship products.
Here’s a breakdown of the 18 steps, each one associated with a unique M&M’s color:
The company, which headquarters on 321 Summer Street, provides cloud and software services for enterprises moving to AWS, Google, Microsoft and other cloud platforms. Last year, its signature booth won the Best Integrated Marketing Campaign at the annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.
At the very beginning, the booth contained around 540 pounds of candies, but it started getting empty really fast (employees, visitors and executives are welcome to help themselves at no charge). So far, the company ordered M&M’s candies in bulk three times: the first in November last year, then in January and in May. Marketing associate Nicole Givin told me that she ordered two bags of candies for each shade, for a total of ten pounds of candies for each color.
“The blue candies go out faster, but the yellow and pink ones go out slowly,” Givin told me, pointing out that the blue M&M’s have a unique feature: They are the only candies in the booth that have impressed the company logo, as well as the M&M’s logo.
The company moved to its new 10,700 sq feet location at 321 Summer Street from its old HQ - located on the same street - in November 2016. In the new office, each of the ten conference rooms was painted in one of the rainbow shades of the candy booth.
To add a musical twist, each conference room was also associated with a song and an album that had to do with that particular color. For example, the Yellow Room is also called the “Yellow Submarine” room, with a cover of the Beatles’ album hanging on the wall. Each room was matched with its song thanks to a survey among employees.
The conference rooms range from a purple lounge named after Prince's "Purple Rain" to a gray call room based on "A Touch of Gray" by the Grateful Dead. Here’s the complete list of colors, albums and artists:
Rainbow Call Room: Rainbow Country - Bob Marley
Blue Conference Room: Blue Suede Shoes - Elvis Presley
Brick Conference Room: Another Brick in the Wall - Pink Floyd
Green Conference Room: Green River - Credence Clearwater Revival
Grey Call Room: Touch of Grey - Grateful Dead
Navy Meeting Room: In the Navy - Village People
Red Call Room: Little Red Corvette - Prince
Yellow Call Room: Yellow Submarine - The Beatles
The Lounge: Purple Rain - Prince
The Vault: At Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash
