Think all lawyers are stodgy? Then you haven’t done business with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a Dallas-based global law firm which brings irreverence and fun to its event-based approach to relationship building. The firm’s strategy doesn’t center on the usual scholarly briefings, three-martini meals, or 18-hole afternoons. Instead, it takes its clients and prospects to the movies. Kids included.

Last fall, the firm rented out a local movie theatre and hosted a movie day featuring Warner Bros.’ “Happy Feet,” an animated film about dancing penguins, for Akin Gump staff, clients, prospects and friends of the firm — and, most interestingly, their families. Free snackbar concessions and gifts added to the fun.

The event is not only entertaining, it’s also good for Akin Gump’s business. “Everyone in this business does seminars and puts together letters, alerts and newsletters, and those are all effective ways to develop business,” says Katherine Kurtz, marketing manager at Akin Gump’s Dallas office. “We wanted to do something unique that would not only thank our clients, but include their families as well. When people make a decision regarding whom they want to work with, they are more inclined to hire the lawyer they enjoy being with. The only way to get there is to get to know our clients on a personal level.”

Since Akin Gump launched the annual movie outing in 2001, it has become so popular and effective that Akin Gump now holds it in three other Texas cities, including Houston, Austin and San Antonio.

Mention breakout sessions, and most people immediately envision hotel meeting rooms with roundtable seating and the requisite pitchers of ice water. Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore, authors of “The Experience Economy” (Harvard Business School Press, 1999) and founders of Strategic Horizons LLP, don’t see meeting rooms. But they do see water. Only not iced, and not in a pitcher.

Each year, the duo stages thinkAbout, a two-day learning event for professionals interested in honing their experience-staging skills. As the vanguard of experiential learning, no ordinary event agenda will do for their learning workshops. So when Pine and Gilmore were planning small-group breakout sessions for their 2006 thinkAbout conference, held in Baltimore, they decided it was time attendees got their feet wet.

After rotating through six different tour stops on the event’s signature “Learning Excursion,” during which attendees see firsthand how experiential design helps drive business objectives for companies in diverse industries, Pine and Gilmore brought participants back to Baltimore’s famed Inner Harbor. There, attendees were invited to their breakout locations: paddleboats. Participants boarded the boats in groups of four and made their way into the harbor for 45 minutes of discussion and idea-sharing.

The maritime venue was a real-time example of how a unique and shared experience can foster interaction and memorability, Gilmore says. The small boats not only provided an opportunity for participants to share lessons learned from the day, but where the conversations occurred was so memorable that what was discussed is likely to be etched in their minds for years to come.

Aircraft-parts and -services provider Duncan Aviation Inc. kept its eyes on the road — not the skies — when devising a series of 50th-anniversary customer events. Rather than show its longevity through a typical corporate timeline, Duncan instead chose to celebrate its anniversary in an iconic and entertaining fashion.

The iconography came all the way from 1956, the year Duncan was founded. A beautifully restored 1956 Chevy Bel Air was located front and center at each of the 17 stops on the company’s “Chart-Topping Road Show,” held at Duncan offices around the country. One lucky winner, drawn from event visitors, drove off in the Bel Air at the close of the tour.

And the entertainment? That came from Duncan’s staff. The company created a “Chart-Topping Hits” CD featuring a compilation of 1956’s most-popular tunes, chosen — and performed — by Duncan Aviation team members with “special” musical talents. Each guest received a copy.

According to Duncan marketing communications manager Lori Johnson, this just-for-fun culture has sustained the company. “After 50 years in the business, we wanted to show customers that fun and a love of aviation are still alive and well (at Duncan),” she says. “We wanted to prove that we live that mission.”

For Duncan’s mechanically inclined customers, the 1956 theme with its classic-car centerpiece, archetypal music, and “no shop talk” ground rules held tremendous appeal. What is good for the company’s culture is also good for business: The just-for-fun atmosphere went sky high to foster the customer loyalty so critical in a slim-margin industry.

Any company would love to give its customers at least a smidgen of one-on-one consultation in the midst of a busy event. Salesforce.com Inc. does it — 30 minutes at a time.

To secure this opportunity while adding a personal touch to Dreamforce, an event that draws more than 5,000 Salesforce.com users and developers, the San Francisco-based sales-automation company holds free 30-minute “1:1 Success Clinics” (short for “one-to-one”) in private booths located on the expo floor.

Customization, automated pre-event registration, and ease of use are crucial to the clinics’ effectiveness, according to Tom Wong, Salesforce.com’s senior director of customer marketing and Dreamforce chair. When attendees register online for Dreamforce, for example, they are automatically given the option to fill out a 1:1 Success Clinic registration form. The form asks registrants to elaborate on their experience using Salesforce.com and to describe needs and challenges they’d like to address while at the show. Registrants receive an automated e-mail response with the date, time, and location of their custom clinic.

Behind the scenes, data captured in the registration forms is routed to a Salesforce.com customer-success manager. Like a case worker, this team member screens the information and conducts additional research within the company’s own customer database to better understand each session registrant’s needs and how he uses the software.

All told, 768 users — approximately 15 percent of all Dreamforce attendees — scheduled a success clinic at the 2006 event. Topics ranged from product wish lists to current challenges. “When people come to our events they inevitably have some burning issue in mind about using the product,” Wong says. “At the success clinics, they can log into Salesforce.com alongside an expert. So instead of talking theoretically about a problem, a consultant is right there to help them solve the problem and to make recommendations.”

When the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association (BACVA) debuted its new brand and tagline, “Get In On It,” last year, the nonprofit organization pulled out all the stops with a local media blitz and launch event. Post-launch, however, it was up to BACVA’s PR department to keep the brand’s buzz-o-meter “buzzing” and bring Baltimore’s “Get In On It” message to leisure travelers throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.

The team’s goal was simple: to show prospective tourists throughout the region “What Baltimore is all about: a colorful city on the waterfront with an ‘easy, open-harbor’ feeling; easily accessible world-class attractions, and a fun, casual atmosphere that prizes spontaneity over planning,” says Nancy Hinds, BACVA’s vice president of public affairs.

To that end, BACVA worked with Baltimore-based Fandango Special Events to create the Snowball Mobile, a colorful, custom-designed ice cream truck that dispensed free snowballs (aka snow cones, which are “synonymous with Baltimore in the summer,” Hinds says,) in campaign-themed flavors such as Port Red, Starboard Green, and City Blue to approximately 10,000 potential travelers in key cities throughout the region.

To ensure that it was reaching the right audience — namely those with the greatest propensity to “get in on it” and visit Baltimore themselves — BACVA made multiple stops in seven key cities within a 250-mile radius of Baltimore, including Richmond, VA, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia. BAVCA found the right prospects in each city by selecting locations where out-of-towners and locals alike tend to congregate: tourist attractions such as Washington’s National Mall and South Street in Philly.

Once on site, the ice-cream truck blared the campaign’s catchy jingle, just like a real ice-cream van, attracting visitors to whom crew members distributed free snowballs and literature marketing Baltimore as a summer-travel destination. In the end, whimsy and weather combined to make the snowball tour a success. “Thankfully, it was a million degrees in most of the cities we visited, so the snowballs were a natural hit and gave people a good reason to visit the truck,” Hinds says. In addition to garnering media exposure, the truck scooped up traffic for the Get In On It Web site. In the three months during and immediately following the snowball tour the Web site logged record traffic.