 A New Age of Innovation Sales Conference

Summary of Brief:

Produce a high impact sales conference held over five days for 500 internal staff to celebrate the company’s pioneering development of blood glucose monitoring systems for diabetes patients. The event needed to resonate with sales forces from 28 different countries and would include two plenary sessions, daily seminars and country breakout sessions, plus two informal dinners and a gala awards ceremony.

What we did:

• Started planning immediately with venue sourcing and logistics quickly getting underway, ahead of the event concept and visual identity being developed.
• Worked with key presenters to hone their content and ensure their presentations made an impact with the global audiences.
• With all day time sessions held in the same hotel, transformed this venue with a range of different set designs, along with branded banners, floor units, seat covers and coasters.
• Built a global showcase exhibition to allow each visiting country delegation an opportunity to highlight learnings and achievements.
• Designed and produced two unique themed and branded games to provide entertainment during delegate refreshment breaks; a buzz wire game which replicated the rise and fall in a diabetes patient’s sugar levels, and a blindfold competition to ‘Pin the Strip on the Meter’.
• Arranged for a team of eight interpreters to be onsite throughout so that the conference content was simultaneously translated, ensuring every member of the audience could participate.
• Shot a series of pre-event interviews with real life diabetes sufferers a month before the conference, which we then screened at intervals throughout the main plenary sessions. These sub-titled, brutally honest accounts featured diabetes patients from all walks of life — including Susan a Scottish farmer, British racing driver Paul, and Anja, a five times world champion kick boxer from Germany— providing an insight into living with the disease.
• Booked The London Community Gospel Choir to provide a flash mob performance — the highlight of the event. Flew the 13-strong choir out to the event and disguised each singer in business wear, hiding them among the delegates before they caused a sensation by standing up one by one to sing a specially rearranged version of the conference theme song at the end of the second day’s plenary session. The full choir and band returned that evening to perform a 45-minute post-dinner set.
• Transformed a restored 15th Century convent to host the gala dinner and awards ceremony on the final night, beaming the company logo against the exterior of the historic building as arriving guests were given the celebrity treatment and captured on film by ‘paparazzi’ and a camera crew as they walked a red carpet.
• The gala event included music from renowned electric cellist Celloman plus a live band and DJ, but the main focus of the evening was the awards ceremony held to recognise the work of the very best of the company’s European sales force. Individuals and teams were honoured in four hotly contested awards categories, including Country of the Year.
• Had our film crew onsite for the duration of the congress, shooting more than 16 hours of footage.
• Carried out an overnight edit on the final night and employed the services of a local DVD duplication house to ensure all 500 guests were given a souvenir DVD of the conference as they left the venue.
• Produced a highlights film that was screened in the closing session of the conference, rousing attendees before they headed home.

More than 40 crew — spanning set design, staging, AV, lighting, autocue and production — helped deliver the event, which took in five separate venues across the Portuguese capital and was delivered four months from receipt of the brief.

Testimonial:

“This event sets a benchmark for sales conferences, not just for us but for the industry. The success of the meeting was down to a combination of OSP’s vision of what success should look like and a determination to achieve it. Their outrageous creativity, calmness, flexibility and can-do attitude was infectious and inspired confidence in all around.”