Client: Salesforce.com
Event: Salesforce Singapore Destination Success Tour
Event organiser: M&a
Venue: St Regis, Singapore
Matching the format of an event to the brand is one of the arts of event management. And there are several key factors that differentiate an IT event from those of other industries.
First, the nature of the client is a prominent factor. Salesforce.com is a market leader and an advocate of software-as-a-service. The client, in this case, has a charter to change the world through a vision of “no software” and in doing so is creating a market-leading position, compounded through increased awareness about their product capabilities, and the technology to come. Delivering these objectives onsite is crucial to the overall success of the IT-oriented event.
Secondly, the product or service on offer essentially differentiates the nature of the event. In the case of salesforce.com, the event becomes a business-to-business (B2B) as opposed to business-to-consumer (B2C) style event. Unlike B2C, these events are not just a sales pitch, they are marketed as a business solution for organisations and require an element of user education.
For Salesforce.com, the new IT solution required a product demonstration to inform and excite each and every delegate. At the St Regis Hotel, the demo was highly interactive, thereby transforming the corporate function, into an experiential IT event.
There is the tendency to presume that the mere mention of an IT event can induce boredom, so the ongoing commitment is to deliver the “wow factor” at each and every event. The challenge is to exceed both the client’s and the attendees’ expectations.
The event had to encapsulate the educational aspect of the product, the entertainment needs of the attendees, and the technical specifications required to deliver an exciting, interactive and informative networking experience.
The venue itself played a significant role in both the “wow” factor and differentiating this salesforce.com event from any other. The St Regis hotel is touted as the first six-star Hotel in Singapore and, by using a venue of this calibre and unsurpassed elegance, ensured invitees were very keen to register and more than willing to attend.
An overwhelming response meant that the venue had to be both functional and dynamic for the anticipated high flow of attendees. The overwhelming response may have created a problem for many venues, however in this case it was assured that requirements needed to make the Salesforce.com event a success could be more than adequately met. A key hurdle in a tech-savvy event like this one was having all equipment work at optimum levels.
The final aspect, which can differentiate an IT event from a regular event, is the evaluation process and the performance indicators at every key stage of the event process.
Jacqueline Tracey, head of events – Asia-Pacific, for event organiser M&a, says: “The ‘Salesforce Singapore Destination Success Tour’ not only created an indelible mark in the minds of prospects that attended, but also assisted in building salesforce.com’s brand presence throughout the Singapore market.
“The event captured an attendance rate of 69 percent, which on both an IT and regular event scale is very high. This is due to the creation of unique value propositions and a drive-to mechanism by M&a that sells the value of the event to prospective attendees,” she says.
