Piggybacking isn’t new to BASF Corp. In fact, the Florham Park, NJ, company has specialized in it for about 141 years.

Its parent company, BASF AG, was founded in Germany in 1865. Operating in the United States since 1986, the BASF subsidiary makes chemicals that go into other companies’ plastic, textile, automotive, pharmaceutical, and agricultural products. Given its advertising message — “We don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” — it’s no surprise that BASF’s event strategy includes jumping on top of other events, like a showcase house at the 2005 International Builders’ Show in Orlando, FL.

BASF’s strategy was as simple as a two-by-four. It helped sponsor architectural guru Sarah Susanka’s “Not So Big Showhouse,” a life-size house constructed for the show highlighting green technologies for the building industry, by including its own products in the Showhouse. Then BASF invited 70 architects and builders, including current and potential customers, to attend an event at the house.

Since the Showhouse was located 20 miles from the Orlando convention center at Lake Nona, BASF bused its guests from the center to the 2,900-square-foot home. There, they attended a presentation by Charlie Popeck, a Phoenix-based expert and consultant on energy-efficient construction. Before Popeck spoke, BASF staff swiped guests’ badges for follow up after the event.

Popeck’s presentation hammered away at how to be a better, greener builder, and plastered the attendees with information on BASF’s products, from the insulated paneling made with Styropor, BASF’s expandable polystyrene resins, to the metal roofing coated with its Ultra-Cool system, which reduces the amount of heat stored in the roof. BASF hoped Popeck and its energy-saving products would appeal to its guests’ environmental concerns.

After the hour-long presentation, attendees toured the house using an interactive audio device. Plaques on the walls instructed visitors to press a given number on their devices if they wanted to know more about products used in the house construction, such as the BASF panels.
The company kept its goals modest: attract 70 targeted customers. All 70 showed for BASF’s main event. But because it piggybacked on a larger event, the Showhouse itself, it also reached a wider audience of the estimated 10,000 visitors who toured the house over the course of the Builders’ Show and the following year. e

Since 2000, FedEx Corp. has scored big with consumers through its sponsorship of the National Football League. Its NFL Air & Ground Campaign includes sweepstakes, online promotions, special vignettes on Monday Night Football, and an ad during the Super Bowl. But the Memphis, TN,-based company wanted to put points on the board with its local corporate clients as well as its consumer market.

FedEx’s original business-to-business strategy was to invite clients to games such as the Orange Bowl and the Super Bowl. But prohibitive costs and the finite availability of tickets limited the number of clients it could invite. That’s why three years ago, FedEx marketers called a play that would impact customers as much as Dick Butkus in a bad mood — but in a good way. It decided to piggyback corporate events on top of its existing sponsorship activities.

Game Plan
FedEx called for the NFL Open House, a series of annual events where current and potential customers gather at their local NFL team’s stadium with FedEx representatives for a behind-the-scenes tour. The guest list is based on a mix of criteria, including: company size; which FedEx product they use most (Express or Ground, for example); and the industry, such as retail, automotive, pharmaceutical, and medical devices. FedEx looks for a good cross-section of customers, spanning industries and its operating companies, including FedEx Kinko’s, FedEx Express, and FedEx International.

The company has held 23 of these events since 2003 in cities such as Denver, Detroit, Seattle, and San Francisco. The Open Houses, produced by Velocity Sports & Entertainment based in Norwalk, CT, each host groups of 400 or more and offer guests behind-the-helmet tours of NFL stadiums, appearances by players and coaches, dinner, and presentations by FedEx executives. Part trade show, part jock talk, the events appeal to guests’ inner football junkie, and are more cost-effective for FedEx than shelling out the average NFL ticket price of $90 for each customer.

“You can’t buy 400 tickets for clients for regular games,” says Nancy Altenburg, FedEx’s sponsorship marketing manager. “But even if you could, this is a much better strategy. It’s based on an already popular FedEx promotion, gets more people to come, and involves them longer.”

The events — like one on Sept. 13, 2005, at Gillette Stadium, the home of the New England Patriots football team in Foxboro, MA — are held on a non-game day, such as Wednesday or Thursday. Clients receive snail mail and e-mail invitations. At least 90 percent of invited clients typically show; in Foxboro, close to 95 percent attended.

Kick Off
The guests (usually a 60/40 male/female split) arrive by way of their own wheels at the stadium parking lot, where FedEx blitzes them with company trucks, sign-age, and uniformed staff directing traffic. An escort leads them to the stadium’s club level, where they register and receive a gift such as a blanket, backpack, or mini football co-branded with FedEx and the home team’s logo. Later, team stars autograph the gifts, which is another reason why FedEx limits the attendance size — to keep it manageable for the athletes who will spend time with guests.

Surrounding attendees like a gang tackle are FedEx sales staff, area-operations workers (the people who oversee customers’ shipments), and trade show-like exhibits for five of FedEx’s operating companies. Here the advantages of the piggyback strategy continue: While attendees may be familiar with FedEx promotions and services through the NFL sponsorship, the exhibits explain the more complex, detail-heavy items that aren’t mass-advertised.

“We show products for fulfillment house and catalog customers, like SmartPost, where FedEx will pick up bulk mailings and expedite them to the local post office, where they are then delivered by the post office,” Altenburg says. “That’s something that takes more time to explain than we can through ordinary sponsorship activities, and at this event we have a chance to do that.”

For the clients, it’s like they died and went to football heaven. Every 15 minutes team personnel lead 20-minute guided tours of the stadium, through areas the average Joe would never see. The small groups of 10 to 12 guests explore the locker room, the team boxes, and maybe even the playing field, where the only time you usually see non-uniformed personnel is shortly before they’re arrested. On the field, the JumboTron runs FedEx commercials along with ads focused on FedEx/NFL Air & Ground Campaign.

After the exclusive junket, it’s a short run back to the lounge area at the club level for the kick-off of the Open House’s second hour. Guests mingle with sales staff, enjoy an upscale dinner and short presentations by local FedEx executives, who cheerlead with short speeches on how valuable the clients are to FedEx, and how valuable FedEx can be to them. The executives’ talks center on things that affect the local clients directly, such as a new transportation hub or shipping facility opening up in their area.

All that’s just the pre-game warm-up. Then it’s game time, with the executives handing off to star players from the NFL team, who toss out speeches that spiral with FedEx and football imagery. At the Gillette event, wide receiver David Givens and linebacker Larry Izzo talked about the importance of an air and ground game, working in references to FedEx services. When athletes finish, guests take possession of the event and sack the athletes with questions and autograph requests. By the time they’re finished, each Open House runs 3.5 to 4 hours, almost exactly the length of an average NFL game.

Post-Event Analysis
Like football teams who dissect their performance after the last whistle blows, FedEx measures its success through post-event online surveys of attendees. With a goal of a 90-percent satisfaction rate on the surveys, the majority of the events — including the Gillette Open House — have scored above that, with one hitting 100 percent. While FedEx keeps its actual sales numbers tighter than its sealed cargo, Altenburg estimates the Open Houses have meant millions to the company.

Football may be a game of inches, but by building on top of an already-popular promotion, FedEx is winning this one by a country mile. e

Remember George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words? 8e6 Technologies provides hardware tools that filter out those words and other
inappropriate material from the Web for schools and businesses faster than you can say *@#!.

Because its customers need to have complete confidence that the filters will allow students and workers to see only squeaky-clean images and files, trust is a vital part of the Orange, CA, company’s bottom line. That trust keeps 95 percent of 8e6’s customers renewing their contracts, which run an average of about two years.

Since T+L2, one of the two major education technology trade shows in the United States, was happening in Anaheim, CA, in October 2003, just four miles from its company headquarters, 8e6 decided to take advantage of the situation to meet with school-district administrators, who make up half of its customer base, and hold an open house at its office.
8e6 is no stranger to events. Twice a year it flies in 15 to 20 customers at a time from bleaker realms — e.g., the Midwest in winter — to Laguna Beach, CA, an Eden with beachfront property. The event leaves an impression on attendees, says Eric Lundbohm, 8e6’s vice president of marketing, “but we aren’t connecting with enough people at one time.”
For the 2003 Open House, 8e6 sales staff invited all of its customers who were attending T+L2. The number — about 35 — may seem low, but a small group ensured that the event could be held in the company building and allowed 8e6 to cover every two guests with one staffer.

First a Ride, Then Some Knockwurst
The company bused the 45 guests (including spouses) who hailed from states such as Alabama, California, Nevada, New York, Texas, and Virginia from the Anaheim Convention Center to its office building. Two salespeople on board greeted them with a cooler full of bottled water for the 10-minute ride.

Naming the event “Oktoberfest,” to coincide with the traditional German fest that time of year, 8e6 hired a German restaurant to cater the event, serving Teutonic sausages (e.g., bratwurst, knockwurst) and mustards. The 20 company staff members — including 15 staff and five executives — dined with the guests. But what the visitors wanted most of all was something they would never get at home, through e-mails and phone calls, or at the trade show: a chance to meet the staff from the Mudroom.

In the MudRoom
The Mudroom is the name of the office where a pack of college kids dredge up the X-rated and inappropriate Web sites 8e6 then programs its hardware to block. “Somebody’s got to find all those porn URLs,” Lundbohm explains.

Giving attendees the unique experience of talking to the behind-the-scenes Mudroomers reaped an unexpected benefit for 8e6. Out of the conversations between clients and the Mudroom staff came the idea for X-strikes. Inspired by the “three strikes and you’re out” laws, X-strikes lets kids try to access a forbidden page X number of times — say 10 — and after that locks them out of the Internet if they don’t cease and desist. “It’s become one of our most popular features,” Lundbohm says, “and it wouldn’t have happened without the event.”

At about 8:30 p.m., 8e6 closed its doors. It shipped the guests back to the convention center or, for those who had tickets, to a nearby Los Angeles Lakers game.

“The strategy of building an event on a trade show allowed us to bypass the usual logistics and scheduling problems running an event usually brings with it,” Lundbohm says. “They did not feel that they were taking a huge chunk out of their work days to meet with us.”

At a typical trade show, Lundbohm interacts with at best six or eight customers. “Here I met with 45. Flying people to Laguna Beach and putting them up costs me $2,000 apiece. Holding this event on top of the trade show cost me $5,000 for 45 people.” That breaks down to $111 per person, or about 95 percent less. And with renewal rates just as high, those are results nobody would bleep out. e

“The … farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything he buys at retail, sells everything he sells at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways,” John F. Kennedy said in 1960. Nearly five decades later, the average farmer is still squeezed like a grapefruit by financial pressures, which is why Farm Credit Canada (FCC) grew a new event on top of an old one.

The Regina, SK, Canada,-based company offers loans and financial services to Canada’s agriculture community. FCC customers present a set of deeply rooted challenges that are as unique as a two-headed calf: FCC spends more to acquire a new customer than to keep a current one. That’s nothing unusual, but standing customers gripe if they see the company spending money on gimmicks and promotions, according to Aj Thakker, former marketing specialist for FCC. “They say, ‘So this is where my interest payments go,’” Thakker says.

Cantankerous customers may be old hat, but a buying period shorter than corn planted in Alaska isn’t. From March to June, farmers generally don’t take out loans to buy anything because they work dawn until dark-thirty planting their crops. Then they don’t take out loans from June to September because all of their money is in the ground. If they do decide to take a loan, it will probably be in January or February, after the crops are harvested, the money is in, the tax year is over, and they start to worry about what they’ll need when the planting season begins again in March.

FCC sponsors and exhibits at the Western Canada Farm Progress Show (one of about 15 major trade shows it attends, as well as local shows and customer events), which draws close to 40,000 attendees. Results from the show are typically not a bumper crop of business. “All we do is end up standing in the booth with people who wanted free yardsticks,” Thakker says. FCC needed to do something quick before its marketing efforts grew fallow.

Betting the Farm on an Event
If FCC was going to reap anything from its customers, it would have to alter its strategy for the upcoming 2005 show, held in June. It had to catch the farmers in the short window of time that they were available at the show, and offer them something they couldn’t get on the show floor or from its rival banks.

“We wanted to piggyback on the show,” Thakker says, “but we also took a novel approach. We used the show to create the event.”

FCC wanted to attract 100 technically savvy farming couples (many farmers share the chores and responsibility with their spouses) who were 40 to 50 years old to its event to educate them on the company’s six different business units and introduce them to its latest product lines, such as software to manage their accounting, as well as their crops, fields, and investments in agriculture, and its venture capital program. Because FCC’s research found that farmers looked for what Thakker calls a “trusted advisor” when it comes to deciding what products they should buy, FCC hoped this group of “alpha farmers” would spread news about its products like Johnny Appleseed.

First it negotiated 300 free tickets from show organizers to send to 150 couples. Then FCC snail-mailed invitations that offered free show admission to those couples. If they answered positively, FCC salespeople dispatched the tickets and information on the event, which was held on the show grounds in a large catering facility in the main building.

FCC included an offer in the follow-up mailing to pick up a coupon for coffee at its booth, which brought guests to the booth, confirmed for FCC that they arrived at the show, made guests feel special that even their coffee was covered by FCC, and gave them a key psychological incentive. “It kept FCC top of mind during the day,” Thakker says.

When the show doors opened, guests made their way to the FCC booth for their coffee coupon, and FCC staff suggested exhibits they would find useful, reminded them of the 6 p.m. event (an hour after the show closed, though the grounds stayed open), and gave them a VIP badge which, hanging around their necks, turned them into roving ambassadors for the company.

FCC created its event in a 2,000-square-foot banquet room in the convention center, a short two-minute walk from the show floor, designed to look like an imaginary small town called Success with a road that led into it. Company executives, including several vice presidents, greeted the guests as they entered the event space, a personal touch that set FCC apart from its much bigger competitors. “There is not a chance in hell they’d ever meet the upper management of any of the other banks,” Thakker says.

Inside, five food stations stood amid six presentation areas, one for each of FCC’s business units. Constructed out of pipe and drape, the presentation areas were as plain as a barn — a projector, three or four tables, and several chairs. If you loaded up your plate and wanted to sit, you had to visit one of the presentation areas, where every 10 minutes for five hours FCC ran brief sessions on insurance, software, loans, and more, with 10 to 15 people in attendance per session. Experts on each topic from FCC taught the sessions, adding 10 minutes for questions afterward.

A Bumper Crop of Results
After each session, FCC invited guests to fill out a brief questionnaire that asked them to define the presentation’s key message, and to indicate how important the product or service featured in the session would be to their operation. For each questionnaire completed, guests received an icon worth $5 that stood for the business line that particular presentation was about. At the end of the night, they could redeem the money to buy products from FCC’s customers, such as a pair of leather gloves, jams, or tools. As they redeemed their “money,” guests were handed a clipboard with six yes/no questions, such as whether they would be likely to purchase FCC’s software in the next six months. The information went straight to FCC’s account managers.

FCC’s goal was to attract 100 couples — 200 attendees in all — to the event; 200 attended. It wanted 100 people — 50 percent — to attend at least three sessions; 196 — 98 percent — attended all six sessions. It wanted at least half of those customers who attended to indicate some interest in the various business solutions FCC offered. Of those who responded to its survey, 70 percent wanted to know more about its products. When it comes to piggybacking events, you can bet the farm on FCC. e