Communication and Motivation Ideas for today’s audiences

ROI 2.0 – Return on Inventiveness

ROI is relative and can be tricky, since we need more skin in the game than dollars to maximize value, manage costs, and engage our audiences meaningfully. This involves demonstrating another ROI I call Return on Inventiveness, or ROI 2.0: being resourceful with meeting and event dollars by finding ways to be more efficient and creative that also makes us better strategic business partners. It’s where “know your audience” is split: participants, your end-users/consumers vs. the team who collaborate to deliver an event experience. It happens at individual and brand levels at different junctures of the event planning process.
 
Despite trends showing rising corporate event spend, ROI 2.0 offers an opportunity for event planners to be inventive. To evaluate our whole event supply chain of people, process and technology for how we get things done that delivers results. Use ROI 2.0 to help you make wise, thoughtful planning decisions in three ways.
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Multi-dimensional customer event marketing

ROI 2.0 really works – creative thinking, technology and partnerships – when dollars and creativity come together to complement a business need. Esprit Productions saw this unfold while producing a product launch at The Manufacturing in America Symposium in Detroit this March. This marketing communications experience made a real statement about the technology...and about Siemens as an innovative industry leader...   Read More »

Emerging technologies lead to emerging partnerships

I have worked with many world-class AV and staging companies over my 25+ years of producing corporate meetings and events. Coupled with our Esprit team of producers and planners, I feel we’ve assembled some of the finest production teams in the business today.

This year we’re surfacing new production challenges to tackle and using some of the Return on Inventiveness 2.0 techniques mentioned above as a guide to solutions... and to launching new partnerships to accomplish our goals. Here are two recent examples.

• For the Siemens TIA Product Launch, our challenge was producing a show that stood up to the sophistication of a 25-minute 3-D movie produced out of Germany. It required specialists who knew specific technologies intricately – a Pandora media server, Christie 20,000 lumen HD-projectors and special 3-D glasses with transmitters – to deliver the best possible viewing experience to our audience. Finding that new partnership in Xpand provided our team with expert advice we needed to reach our goal, described a bit further in Showcase above.

• For the upcoming Nielsen Consumer 360 Conference we're helping produce, our client is excited about identifying new insights into consumer package goods marketing and media from engaged participants. So, alongside a live streaming globally of the general sessions, this conference will include brainstorming Super Sessions with digital flipcharts to capture what will be literally thousands of ideas throughout the different breakout sessions that might otherwise get lost. Finding yet another great partner like Facilitate is setting us up for success by gaining expert pre-production and onsite advice for a flawless information-gathering process onsite.

Inventive thinking with a little "change to the interior"

Practicing these ROI 2.0 principles can start by re-calibrating ourselves by looking internally at what we can adjust. This happens at the brand level too, with transportation partners like Southwest Airlines who's demonstrating a little change to their interior to improve their operations and overall customer satisfaction levels.
 
To my delight, during my recent Detroit travels for Siemens, I noticed something special: more leg room! This enhancement is part of new design to Southwest Airlines' Boeing 737 series announced last year. The changes center on their core brand values that drive real cost savings and efficiencies to their operations while enhancing the customer experience...around something as basic as...yes, cabin seating! Their broader design strategy – "Evolve: The New Southwest Interior" – includes things like earthy blue/brown tones; low-profile seating that’s lighter and more comfortable with eco-friendly products; and more overall customer "living space" by tweaks to seat recline and over-/under-seat areas.
 
Using seating as an anchor for a bigger design plan, these "little touches" result in bits of visual and physical creature comforts for us travelers. As an event producer, this commitment to planning, details and quality right down to the individual person is something I appreciate. And as a heavy (and sometimes weary) traveler for my own events, this made my brand experience with Southwest really take off from good to great. It's another example of ROI 2.0 that makes for happier and repeat customers like me...and for more rested, engaged event participants...who may just be attending YOUR next event!

Sincerely,

Ron Springer