Shining the light on your event team’s rock stars
Julie, a Senior Vice President of one of the world’s largest technology companies, faced a new challenge: A marquee event from her organization, hosted by the company’s co-CEOs, was moving to a new venue. Not only did Julie have to navigate the complexities of moving this event to a brand new venue, but also she was tasked with doing so with an entirely new internal events team.
John Legend performing
Fortunately for Julie, there was one final new addition to their events team: KCI Management. For KCI, a new venue and a new team is old hat. The KCI way has proven time and again that if an event is done right, variables may change, but the integrity and success of the event will always remain the same.
The first step was to create a new blueprint and logistical plan. The team dove right in by building rapport with the offices of the CEOs, and ultimately overseeing every aspect of registration, travel and accommodation. With many high profile guests in attendance, we knew that every detail had to be accounted for in order to ensure a seamless experience from getting off the plan.
If you’ve done events before, you know moving to a new venue can cause all sorts of unexpected problems. The KCI team was ahead of the curve, collaborating with the internal events team, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts.
The KCI Way is to support and empower events team, helping them look like rock stars, while filling in the gaps along the way. For this event, we noticed that invitee follow ups were becoming challenging for the time-strapped internal team. At KCI, we assembled a team to augment the existing players, rolled up our sleeves, and jumped in to narrow down the list of open invites, ensuring the attendee attendance goals for the event were all met.
Last, but not least, the KCI team was responsible for on the ground, operational logistics, becoming the point of contact for the venues. By stepping in, we allowed this client to free up significant amounts of their time and focus on other critical matters.
The KCI team knew, as did Julie, that this high profile event had to go off flawlessly. The stakes were incredibly high, with attendees such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Legend scheduled to attend. Julie’s company was actively positioning themselves as a thought leader, so it was imperative that the quality of the event matched the excellence in the brand promise of the organization.
Failing to deliver an excellent event was never an option for Julie or our KCI team. The event was a resounding success, with attendee feedback surpassing the previous year’s event. Combined with a newly streamlined audience recruitment process that helped improve the quality of attendees, our work informed the next year’s CEO Summit planning.
We were delighted to hear from Julie after the event:
“The event went like a dream, all items fell into place and every CEO in attendance had nothing but rave reviews from the first touch point to the last. KCI not only made everyone feel like a rock star, they made me look like one to my management.”
We are thrilled to have helped Julie get the recognition she deserves for executing an excellent event.