To demonstrate the benefits of its new TelePresence Meeting technology, which enables real-time video- and teleconference encounters across the globe, Cisco Systems Inc. felt consumers had to experience the system firsthand. So, it crafted a plan for a worldwide product launch that would connect business people in a conference call “relay” across four countries.

Opus Solutions of Beaverton, OR, mapped out a plan to handle the logistics and timing to pull off the launch, which began with a videoconference call in London that eventually wound its way to New York, San Jose, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Each videoconference began with Cisco executives introducing the TelePresence software to a select group of clients and members of the press in each host city. After fielding questions from the small audience — each group consisted of only four people — the executives connected the attendees to the next city on the list. For example, the London group was connected to the group in New York, then New York was connected to San Jose, San Jose to Hong Kong, and finally Hong Kong to Singapore. To further demonstrate the real-time connection, the groups joined in a spirited rendition of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” the one song the global audience understood.

But a spot-on round-robin performance wasn’t the only positive outcome of the launch. The event garnered 231 press mentions in Europe and the United States, 33 new, actionable leads for Cisco, and 78 percent of the attendees surveyed after the event indicated they were “more inclined to purchase” the TelePresence program. Now that’s reaching out and touching someone.

DeWalt doesn’t mind getting manhandled when it comes to putting its products in to the hands of potential customers — construction pros who tend to put their equipment through the ringer. To prove its products could withstand the rough-and-tumble environment its customers work in, the Baltimore, MD, tool company hosts two different traveling competitions in which consumers can put its products to the test — the Guaranteed Tough Tour and the Rolling Thunder Tour, which stops at NASCAR-related events. Participants in the challenges compete for DeWalt-branded T-shirts, hats, work lights, and cordless drills.
One activity during the Rolling Thunder Tour, dubbed the Wheel Change Challenge, pits customers against the clock to see who can change a racecar wheel in the shortest amount of time using a DeWalt 18V cordless impact driver. Other activities include the Strong Arm Challenge and the Drive 5 to Ride promo, which was recently held at Baltimore Harley Davidson. Participants competed to see who could drill five screws into a piece of wood the fastest for a chance to win a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

“Challenges always bring out our customers’ competitiveness and anytime we can use strong-arm competitions like this, we can create awareness of our tools among a captive audience,” says Justin Harty, DeWalt’s national event marketing manager.

Each year, the two touring competitions travel to several DeWalt distributor locations across the United States, from California to New York.

Hosting a dinner party is a great way to make introductions, foster lively conversation about an array of topics, and spend quality face time with invited guests. Hosting a VIP dinner party as an off-site event in conjunction with an exhibit at a trade show, however, is a great way to introduce prospective clients to account executives, foster lively conversation about a company’s key products and services, and spend quality face time with current clients, prospects, and members of the press. Which is exactly why MG Design Associates, a full-service exhibit house based in Pleasant Prairie, WI, invited VIPs to an event at the Creative Cooking School of Las Vegas during EXHIBITOR2008, an exhibition and conference for trade show and event professionals.

MG Design provided three shuttle buses to transport attendees to the cooking school. Upon arrival, they were split into groups of six, which included a mix of current clients, prospects, and members of the media, along with at least one MG Design staff member. In between cooking demonstrations, which were peppered with the company’s key messages thanks to a script given to the chefs, clients extolled the benefits of working with MG Design, sharing unsolicited success stories with prospects and the media. The casual setting of the cooking school also meant there was no strict itinerary apart from drinking and eating, and the event, which MG Design estimated would last about an hour, went on for two-and-a-half hours, giving staffers quality one-on-one time with the 41 attendees.

How do you communicate that your new shipping service is “fast as hell”? If you’re Dynamic Parcel Distribution (DPD), the German equivalent of U.S.-based FedEx Corp., you hijack a trade show’s attendee base, plant your messages in attendees’ minds before they ever reach the show floor, and whisk them off to their hotels in red Porsche 911s.

DPD used this guerilla-marketing tactic to generate awareness for its Formula Express shipping service among attendees at the 2007 German Logistics Convention in Berlin, most of whom were embarking for the show from one of five major German airports.

Positioned at the gates of Berlin-bound flights the night before and the morning of the show’s opening day, DPD reps approached everyone who looked like business travelers and asked whether they were attending the convention. If so, the rep told them about DPD’s Formula Express, as well as a special shuttle service they could win. If executives provided a business card and took some literature with them, they were entered into a drawing for the chance to win “fast as hell” transportation to their hotels upon arrival in Berlin.

As attendees boarded their planes, the reps drew one or two business cards, called another set of reps in Berlin, and relayed the names of the winners. After the short 30- to 50-minute plane rides, the winners were met by DPD reps in Berlin and zipped to their hotels in the hot Porsches.

DPD shuttled a total of 71 people via the “fast as hell” service, and reps talked to roughly 1,500 of the show’s 3,000 targeted execs — 500 more than DPD’s goal. Even those attendees who didn’t win witnessed the “fast as hell” campaign in action at the Berlin airport. And what’s more, roughly 10,000 other business travelers saw the strategy in action.

At the Gnome Conference, also known as GUADEC (the Gnome Users’ and Developers’
European Conference), attendees don’t just sit back and soak in the content event organizers

deliver to them. Like Gnome itself, an open source desktop environment, the conference thrives on customer participation, from brainstorming sessions to group discussions.
One of the best — and most exciting — opportunities at the conference for attendee participation is an hour-long frenzy of attendee presentations called Lightning Talks.

Presenters have about five minutes each to present topics of their choice, such as demoing their favorite applications or talking about the status of their pet projects.

“We had so much interest from people who wanted to present a small project or module at the conference, but we have a limited amount of space in the schedule,” says Dave Neary, a Gnome foundation member. “We find that presenters can really get their idea across in five minutes, and anyone who is interested in learning more about it can contact them after the presentation.”

Neary borrowed the idea for the Lightning Talks from YAPC (Yet Another Perl Conference), a series of regional events hosted by IT user group The Perl Foundation.

Any attendee can submit a proposal to the conference board — the session usually includes 12 to 14 talks. (Conference organizers regularly let the session run over its hour slot into lunch.) The 2007 lineup included topics such as “A serious talk about Giggle,” “Why does my disk churn so much?” and “Soylent Gnome is made of People!”

“One of the best things about the Lightning Talks is that they’re easy to organize. We just let the presenters get up there and talk,” Neary says.

As a side benefit, the Lightning Talks allow more than a dozen attendees to take an active role in the conference. They also allow the event’s organizers to spotlight a handful of additional topics ­— many of which are of interest to GUADEC attendees — that might have otherwise been omitted from the conference due to the limited number of speaking opportunities available.