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Effective selling is all about having intimate knowledge of the product or service you are trying to sell. And what better way to gain that knowledge than to use the products yourself? That’s the conclusion outdoor-equipment and apparel maker, The North Face, came to during its four-day sales meeting at Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe, CA. Instead of spending all four days and nights in the hotel, The North Face decided to let its sales team experience the great outdoors — in The North Face gear, naturally. For the Green-minded company, spending the first night of the conference outdoors was an obvious choice. Sales staff, accompanied by professional athletes (which the company taps for research and development feedback), pitched The North Face tents, slept in The North Face sleeping bags, and stayed warm in The North Face outdoor apparel. In total, 350 people spent the night under the stars, using zero resources from the hotel and outputting a single bag of garbage among all 10 campsites. What’s more, each camper gained product knowledge and got ample face time with the professional athletes to which its products are targeted, giving them the inside track on what their end users are looking for.	Typically when you host a client-appreciation event, the last thing you want is a laugh at your guests’ expense — unless you’re CGI Group Inc. To emphasize the Hollywood theme of its CGI Forum, the IT-services provider hired a Joan Rivers impersonator to heckle attendees on the red carpet as they made their way to the event’s Governor’s Ball at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel. Cameras were on hand to record the faux-Joan interactions, which were on a live feed to large screens inside the ballroom for all to see. The commentary provided an icebreaker for guests while they sampled cocktails and cuisine.
Every year, the Salone Internazionale del Mobile furniture fair in Milan, Italy, takes attendees to a whole new world of fantastical exhibits and cutting-edge products. Italian fashion house Fendi decided to make its own statement in the furniture world and partnered with Design Miami to host Craft Punk, a design event featuring 14 international designers who recycled discarded materials from the production of handbags, luggage, clothing, and accessories into works of art. Intended to provide a platform where young artists could display their talents, the Craft Punk event tied into the Fendi credo that craftsmanship is first and foremost for the brand. The event brought together designers from 10 countries for 72 hours in a 30,000-square-foot space. Not only did the designers work on their creations in the huge room, they slept in a barracks in the back of the space and ate their meals together. Keeping in line with the all-for-one attitude, Craft Punk invited the public to be part of the process. More than 1,500 attendees from Salone Internazionale del Mobile interacted with the designers throughout the three-day event. The finished products were as different as the artists and their native countries. Kwangho Lee knitted a piece of furniture from tubes of lighting, while designers Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay folded flat materials into a chair. Though the event was initially developed merely to promote young artists and designers, Craft Punk generated mentions in a variety of high-end publications, such as Elle Décor and Metropolitan Home, as well as numerous e-zines and blogs.
To stay top-of-mind among consumer publications working on gift guides for the upcoming holiday shopping season, eBay Inc. opened up its very own brick-and-mortar shop this past July. But this wasn’t any regular store. In fact, it wasn’t a conventional store at all, but rather the scene for a series of press-only events to bring the “essence of eBay” — in short, finding everything you need in one place — to life. The online auction site teamed up with public-relations firm Edelman and Retail Md Inc. to create a store in a vacant retail space in New York, and enlisted the help of its sellers, from which it gathered gift items up for auction from each of its key marketplace categories. To pique the interest of nearly 100 local editors for magazines such as Health, Teen Vogue, and Seventeen, eBay sent out save-the-date e-mails five weeks prior to the event, and followed them up with two separate e-vites — one for a day event, which went to long-lead editors; and one for an evening cocktail event, which went to short-lead editors and bloggers. When editors arrived at the events, they were greeted by one of 10 eBay representatives who gave tours of the store and communicated key messages regarding eBay’s one-stop-shop appeal. Guests then received gift bags complete with a voucher for an eBay auction. Although nothing in the physical space was for sale on site, interested shoppers could peruse the site’s offerings at one of six computers in the pop-up store. The online company’s foray into real-world retail paid off, as more than 70 editors took the company up on its offer. The pop-up store also received several mentions in shopping blogs and Twitter sites, and eBay anticipates strong continued press coverage throughout the entire holiday season. Now that’s one online company that knows how to keep it real.

To build awareness and raise donations for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, the nonprofit organization hosted its third annual Canstruction competition last June. The design competition solicited entries from local architecture, engineering, and construction firms, which were tasked to create a sculpture out of canned goods. The entries were judged in four categories: juror’s favorite, best meal, structural ingenuity, and best use of labels. Winners were announced the day of the organization’s “A-CAN-emy” Awards Gala. To further increase awareness for the organization, all Canstruction entries were on display at The Merchandise Mart Apparel Center until the end of June, when the structures were dismantled and the cans donated to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The participating firms donated a total of 70,000 cans of non-perishable food, which translated to 45,224 meals.

Quick, what’s one word that sums up the marketing campaigns of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc.? If you said “quirky,” you’re right on the money. To launch its newest confection, dubbed Flipped Out Sundaes, the venerable Vermont ice-cream maker turned traditional marketing on its head — literally. Ben & Jerry’s teamed up with Lancaster, MA-based Turtle Transit to create a “flipped out” truck to play off of the unique packaging of its new sundaes, which the consumer has to flip over in order to open. The vehicle looked normal by all accounts, except for the upside-down graphics on the panels of a box truck and a second “cab” stacked — roof to roof — atop the truck’s actual cab. The vehicle was the centerpiece for a mobile sampling event with stops in cities across the United States, including New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. At each stop, Ben & Jerry’s staffers unloaded the truck and set up tables, chairs, and two 10-by-10-foot branded tents, creating temporary cafés to serve Flipped Out Sundaes to the masses. To extend the life of the event long after the truck rolled out of town, attendees could pose in front of an upside-down landscape backdrop and have their photo taken by a Ben & Jerry’s staffer. The photos were then posted on the event’s Facebook page.

When it launched its XC60 4x4 vehicle in October 2008, the Volvo Car Corp. transformed a nearly 100,000-square-foot rented warehouse into an experiential environment that put thousands of its dealers into the homes of perspective buyers. Volvo invited nearly 6,000 of its international dealers to attend the XC60 launch event, hoping to net the same 90 percent approval rating its 2007 V70 received. The thumbs up from dealers would mean stronger sales pitches and — the company hoped — higher sales of the vehicle when it was rolled out in dealerships around the globe. To give dealers an up-close-and-personal look at the customer profile to which Volvo planned on targeting the XC60, the event featured a sit-down dinner in one of four loft apartments created inside the warehouse. The apartments reflected the lifestyles of the respective “residents” — an eco-conscious architect with a young family, a sports-fanatic Web designer, two globetrotting doctors, and a technophile banker. The interior design of each space evinced the personality of its residents, from the dark wood and linen tablecloths in the doctors’ home to the sleek modern furniture and clean lines of the Web designer’s pad. A Michelin-starred gourmet chef prepared the meal for the guests, and postcards from the faux occupants were read during dinner, giving attendees more insight into the automaker’s target audience. A total of 5,642 dealers attended the launch, an unbelievable 98 percent of those invited. Plus, the attendees gave the XC60 a solid thumbs up, with a whopping 93-percent approval rating. With results like that, Volvo proved it knows how to drive home its marketing message. To cater to the growing number of female NASCAR race fans — the split is currently 60 percent male, 40 percent female — and to capitalize on its sponsorship of the association, Reckitt Benckiser Inc. decided to give racetrack bathrooms a cleaning any mom would be proud of. The company, which makes Lysol cleaning products, stationed female brand ambassadors at five women’s restrooms during each of nine NASCAR races. Dubbed “Lysol Clean” restrooms and decked out in Lysol-branded stall signage, the loos were scrubbed and disinfected multiple times throughout each day by the brand ambassadors, who were also on hand to answer questions about Lysol products, hand out coupons, and educate race fans about the importance of disinfecting germ-infested hot spots, such as public potties.

If you wanted to attend Meeting Professionals International’s 2009 World Education Conference in Salt Lake City, you needed cold, hard cash — a resource that seems to be in short supply these days. MPI estimates attendees spent an average of $1,725 to attend. So to accommodate those that couldn’t afford the trip, MPI introduced its Virtual Access Pass. The VAP Web site featured Webcasts of speeches and select sessions, along with educational materials including case studies and industry research. The VAP also allowed purchasers to participate in MPI’s social-networking tool, which provided session schedules, handouts, and access to group conversations and messaging that took place during the conference — all for about a third of the price of attending the event in person. To stretch attendees’ dollars even further, and encourage in-person attendance at its 2010 WEC event, MPI offered those who signed up for the VAP a $100 credit toward attending next year’s conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada.