Rock my meeting Like a Hurricane!

January 10, 2008 7:44 AM

Help me open a week long sales meeting with a BANG!

New guy at work and on Friday we have a brainstorming session to come up with ideas on how we (marketing) should open our national sales meeting. I work for a medical device company.

Help me be the superstar and come up with some good ideas. Here is the direction we received:

"During Friday’s meeting, we will be having an important brainstorming session concerning the opening of the national sales meeting. This opening will be about 10 minutes long. It usually consists of a video and/or loud music.

The goal of the video is to get them pumped up for a long weekend of learning."

Just b/c we normally have done the video/music thing doesn't mean I'm tied to that option.

Thx!

posted by doorsfan to work & money (16 comments total)

IS THERE ANYTHING THAT CAN GET YOU MORE PUMPED UP THAN THIS?
posted by poppo at 7:50 AM on January 10, 2008

At my last national sales meeting for a big company (about 5 years ago) they had 2000 of us in an auditorium and started with loud music and lights with a couple of guys on BMX bikes that came down the aisles and then hit a half pipe that had been built on stage. It was pretty damn cool. They ended the 3 day sales meeting with a private B-52s concert. Not bad for a company that lost billions that year.

Other companies I've worked for that didn't have quite that kind of budget started with a well know motivational speaker to get us all fired up.
posted by COD at 8:10 AM on January 10, 2008

I'm in a similar position for an extermination company.
What we've used in the past have been videos "starring" our R&D team introducing new innovations CSI-style.
Corporate-wide, we had a new branding meeting around the theme of "acceleration." Typical stock "exciting" music, plus lots of stock footage of race cars, rocket launches, runners, etc. mixed in with key words from the messaging that would be introduced at that meeting.
posted by Coffeemate at 8:13 AM on January 10, 2008

Well since your budget probably doesn't involve bringing in Slash, I'd say get the top level managers at the event to do a Rock Band(videogame) opening and follow it up with some hand picked ringers.

Loud Music, showmanship, humor and competition.
posted by imjosh at 8:20 AM on January 10, 2008

Well, don't do this.

Seriously though, a well put together video with good (read, not cheesy) music can actually be really good. It's a hard act to pull off.

The company I used to work for started off a training day with a cracking video that flashed up a bunch of big numbers and tried to get across how entangled we were, as a company, with everyday life in my country, stuff like:

"systems we installed handle twenty thousand trillion transactions a second - we've worked with these banks, and these airlines" and so on and so on. Whoever had made the video had put a lot of effort into it (it was definitely third party produced), the music was good, the facts were inspiring and even though I was a month away from leaving and at the height of my cynicism about the firm, it put a definite lump in my throat.

Now, you work for a medical device company - I'm thinking that's either external devices (scanners, things that go bleep bleep bleep in the background of hospital dramas etc) or internal things (pacemakers, artificial hips etc).

You need to focus on the end results (i.e. your devices help people actually live longer etc), a few numbers (we sold a squillion!) why you're selling them (cos they're awesome and high quality and people's lives depend on them) and how the individual actions of sales people mean good things (perhaps a case study following Widget A from concept to design to manufacture to testing to sales to surgery to saving someone's life.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:24 AM on January 10, 2008

The most energizing meeting opening I've ever seen involved firearms, so I will not recommend it.

But consider this: air powered confetti launchers and/or flash bombs. Um, get a pro to handle the installation and triggering. It'd go well with the Rock Band/Guitar Hero suggestion above, if you keep it a secret, and arrange to have them triggered whenever some random employee (not a ringer) hits a certain score level. Alternatively, they can be used to emphasize some important moment in the video.

...then again, I like theater pyrotechnics. YMMV.
posted by aramaic at 8:31 AM on January 10, 2008

Perhaps actual explosives could liven things up. Just blow up some of your competitors products, no intellectual dissembling needed. Quick and easy.

Or, at the other end of the easiness spectrum, how about a gospel-style show with a choir singing "Movin' On Up" or "When The Saints Come Marching In" to organ accompaniment and you giving an arm-waving sermon-type presentation. With some plants in the audience shouting "Amen!" and "Testify!" at appropriate moments.

("Brothers and sisters, look ye upon this revenue chart, can you not see the Q2 sales projections rising, rising, rising like the angels of the Lord! Hallelujah!")
posted by XMLicious at 8:32 AM on January 10, 2008

What is your budget?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:54 AM on January 10, 2008

Re: the Rock Band/Guitar Hero suggestions above, is that something you'd have to get RIAA permission to do?
posted by inigo2 at 9:16 AM on January 10, 2008

Clearly, this is a job for Dwight Schrute.
posted by man on the run at 9:16 AM on January 10, 2008

I should add that I wish I could find the original version of that video online, without the creepy historic footage...
posted by man on the run at 9:19 AM on January 10, 2008

Regarding competitors's products:
Will they blend?
posted by bassjump at 9:37 AM on January 10, 2008

can you get the blue man group to do an elaborate schtick involving your medical devices, trapezes, slides and a giant rubber duckie?
posted by bruce at 9:50 AM on January 10, 2008

Re: the Rock Band/Guitar Hero suggestions above, is that something you'd have to get RIAA permission to do?

I think this falls under the category of stuff that your basic ASCAP blanket license covers. If your company has a lot of meetings, they have it covered already (they pay an annual license fee based on the number of meetings and number of people where music is played/performed). The venue may even have it covered.
posted by Mozzie at 11:17 AM on January 10, 2008

I think you also SHOULD NOT DO THIS.

Actually, take that back. It's fine if you arrange for that to be done; just not so good to be the done doing it.

Actually, take that back, too. As new guy, you should be in listening mode . . . the risk of being blamed by someone for something that's boring, or humiliating, probably exceeds the likelihood that you will come up with something that everyone will love and no one will hate PLUS the risk that if you do a good job you will be stuck doing this until the day you die.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 1:05 PM on January 10, 2008

Oh, heck. If you're going to do something that's already been done before, do this.
posted by XMLicious at 1:12 PM on January 10, 2008