Creating a Family Festival for 2,500 Sanofi Staff & Families

September 2025 | Corporate Family Day | Event Management | Creative Production

The Brief

Sanofi Waterford wanted to create something special for its team — a large-scale family celebration that would bring staff and their families together for a day of entertainment, activities, food and shared experiences.

With approximately 2,500 staff and family members attending, this wasn’t simply a company BBQ. The aim was to create the atmosphere and excitement of a real festival while ensuring that the event was professionally managed, family-friendly and enjoyable for every age group.

Big Bear Design was appointed as the lead production company, responsible for bringing the event together from concept through to delivery.

The Challenge

An event for 2,500 people has to work on several levels.

Adults need somewhere to relax and socialise. Children need activities that keep them engaged. Families need plenty to see and do throughout the day. Food service needs to cope with significant numbers, and everything has to operate safely and smoothly without the event ever feeling overly structured.

The challenge was to transform the Sanofi site into a genuine festival environment while taking care of all the production and operational detail behind the scenes.

The Big Bear Solution

We designed SanofiFest around one simple idea:

Create a festival that families could explore at their own pace.

The site was transformed with multiple entertainment, activity and food areas, giving guests something new to discover throughout the event.

Experiences included VR games, interactive robots, live science demonstrations from Simply Science, bouncy castles and children’s entertainment, alongside a range of activities designed for both adults and younger guests.

Food was an important part of the festival atmosphere too, with Bad Boys Barbecue, freshly prepared pizza and ice-cream trucks helping create a relaxed outdoor festival experience.

Behind everything guests could see was the Big Bear production team coordinating the site, suppliers, entertainment, infrastructure, creative installations, logistics and event-day delivery.

The Result

2,500 staff and family members. One site. One major celebration.

SanofiFest successfully transformed the workplace into a completely different environment for the day — somewhere employees could relax, introduce colleagues to their families and enjoy the company away from their normal working environment.

For Big Bear, the project demonstrates exactly what we mean by full event production: taking a client’s ambition and turning it into a complete experience.

Could We Create Something Similar for Your Team ?

Whether it’s 200 people or 2,500, Big Bear can design a company celebration around your people, your site and your budget.

Talk to us about your next Staff Celebration, Family Day or Company Festival.

Lorraine O’Toole – Sanofi Waterford

Sanofi Waterford has worked with Big Bear Design for many years on large and small scale events, most recently for an onsite celebration anniversary and BBQ event for over 1,100 personnel, and they have consistently been exceptional. The quality of their service is always outstanding — professional, friendly, and reliable — and their team are an absolute pleasure to work with. They are incredibly creative, helpful, and attentive to detail, always going the extra mile to ensure every event runs smoothly and is delivered to an exceptionally high standard. We have no hesitation in recommending Big Bear Design Ltd and we look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.