How a parking garage helped pull a team together for a unique sales conference

Challenge

Following several acquisitions, a leading global pharmaceutical client became aware that their organization had become disjointed and the staff lacked knowledge about the business and the full scope of its capabilities. They needed to pull their team together to give them a deeper understanding and introduce the company’s rebrand with a focus on its five strategic priorities. The event required logistics for 700 guests, which included accommodation split over three hotels and nine restaurant options for dine-arounds on the second night.

Solution

Previously the client’s meetings had quite a formal structure but, due to the acquisitions, we believed the time was right to change the look and feel of the event to keep the delegates engaged. With this in mind, we introduced an in-the-round stage and chat show feel to the opening session and kept it short. To create a sense of empowerment, each of the client’s individual business units were given the autonomy to design and run breakout sessions independently. These sessions gave the units an opportunity to present their work and highlight their contribution to the five strategic priorities to their colleagues. By unpicking their objectives and looking differently at their content, we were able to enhance the messaging and delivery to delegates through informal campfire sessions, debates, workshops, presentations, games and scenario planning. The client wanted to foster the theme of celebration and collaboration at the gala dinner so the global business units were encouraged to network through a varied table plan. The meal was followed by an awards presentation and culminated with a house band for the final stage of the evening.

Result

Our ideas for the event, the informal sessions and unique production required spaces that were not accommodated in the existing rooms at the client’s chosen venue. We were able to remedy this by transforming the underground level of the parking garage into tailored function rooms that enabled our ideas to happen in the chosen space. Ashfield managed all the production elements around this, as well as for all the informal campfires sessions, workshops, general sessions and gala evening. Delegate feedback backed this up, showing an extremely strong level of engagement with the company, content and strategic vision.