Running a conference and nobody wants to come?

Case Study - Conference Management

THE CLIENT

DuPont Performance Coatings

THE CHALLENGE

• Your annual distributor’s conference is a major piece of organisation - accommodation, speakers, dinners and all the other stuff that ties your staff up for weeks or probably months.

• It’s your major chance to get you message across to your most important customers! One big problem - The customers don’t want to come.

• They don’t want to come because a couple of days of talking heads, even if it’s in a flash 5 star hotel. Just isn’t much fun.

• This was the exact problem faced by one of our clients in the automotive industry.

• For the last few years the attendance numbers at our annual distributor conference have been declining to the point where there were almost more staff than distributors. We asked 318 Incentives to come up with something completely different.

THE OUTCOME

• 318 Incentives brought television and cricket celebrity Mike Whitney on board and developed a ‘Who Dares Wins’ theme and program for the 3 day conference.

• The delegates were split into teams, with each team competing for ‘Dare Points’ during the conference. Dare Points could be won by all team members, by participating in a whole range of fun activities during the non session periods of the conference.

• Mike and the ‘Who Dares Wins’ girls managed the team activities right through to the final conference dinner, where each team was given a final special ‘Ultimate Dare’ to win. The prize for all members of the winning team was ‘Hot Laps’ in a V8 Supercar at the race track closest to their home.

• The outcome was sensational with registrations exceeding our target within a week of the launch of the conference brochure. Final registrations were the biggest for many years. We actually had to decline registrations as we exceeded the available accommodation and conference space.

• Above all it was a very successful conference and everyone had a fun time. We are already wondering what 318 Incentives will come up with for next year.