Just Add Water works with organisations to bring about growth and performance improvement through leadership development, employee engagement and brand experience.
The UK-headquartered creative agency, with offices in Singapore, has been partnering with Intercontinental Hotels Group since 2011. It has organised over half a dozen large-scale conferences across China and Southeast Asia for IHG and was tasked with organising the most recent Greater China Senior Leaders Meeting in Chengdu, back in April 2016, based around the theme “Winning Faster, Together”.
As one of the world’s leading hospitality companies with a presence in over 130 countries worldwide, the China market is crucial to IHG. The company has eight of its strongest brands in Greater China across 271 hotel sites and 200 more are in the pipeline.
Winning Pitch
The IHG Greater China Senior Leaders Meeting offers a rare opportunity for IHG business leaders, whether they are from the corporate office, global executives, or hotel general managers, to gather under one roof and meet their colleagues as well as hotel owners and suppliers.
For IHG, Just Add Water provides creative and behavioural consultancy, production and facilitation for the company’s large-scale conferences and meetings.
An authentic and engaging message that delivers a clear strategy from the leadership team is integral to each event’s success.
Just Add Water was asked to develop content, produce the live running of the event, assist with presentation skills and bring the delegates together through a variety of related group engagement activities.
Highlights
“We worked with IHG’s Greater China executive committee to develop theme and content across the event, ensuring that the strategic intent and commercial objectives of the business were the ‘red thread’ that weaved through the whole conference,” said Oliver Hall, Just Add Water’s managing director for Asia. “With individual executive committee members and specialist subject speakers, we worked on authenticity, presence, delivery and content to ensure the success of their individual presentations.
“We produced and facilitated the dual-language event, ensuring that the visual impact, creativity and flow was in keeping with the high expectations of senior leaders in the hospitality industry,” said Hall.
“Relationship building across the Greater China regional team, its GMs and its owners, are important elements to a regional conference. We developed a series of engaging and immersive activities through the event that allowed delegates to interact in fresh ways and build their relationships while reinforcing the strategic theme of the meeting.”
The Upshot
Delegates left with a clear understanding of the business strategy and insights into IHG’s brands and the market challenges, said Hall. Owners and GMs had the chance to meet, strengthen existing relationships and make new connections across the group through shared experience.
The event saw strong re-engagement to the core IHG brands with a passion for the theme of “Great Hotels Guests Love” – factors that are vital to IHG’s vision and goals.
Delegate comments included: “I enjoyed the inspirational and creative sessions. They were engaging – not like boring lectures. And the content is really hotel relevant.
“The sessions were much more cogent. I could clearly see the message and what I need to do. The presentations were helpful in creating focus and not wasting any time.”
“The Leaders Meeting made me feel closer to IHG and understand how functions such as the Support Centre can help hotels win faster.”
Checklist
Event: IHG Greater China Senior Leaders Meeting
Agency: Just Add Water
Venue: Intercontinental Century City Chengdu
Attendees: 500 hotel owners, hotel GMs and senior corporate leaders
Big Moments: Leaders Meeting; specialist subject speakers, visual impact and creativity
Date: April 20-22, 2016
