January 2006
Custom exhibitor programs
Case Study: MediaLive’s customized program for Cisco at Interop succeeds in pushing customers along the sales pipeline
By Maxine Golding


When sales-qualified leads shoot up 600 percent and responders double from the previous year, Cisco Systems can point directly to a customized trade show program that stimulates customer action.

The story begins in the fall of 2003. Mary Fehrnstrom, in her new job leading event strategy, starts to look at how different shows in Cisco’s portfolio fit overall goals and objectives. Who’s the target audience, what’s Cisco’s interaction with them, and what are these people thinking about Cisco when they “walk away” from the engagement? Her task is to move away from thinking that “we always go to this show” or “we did this last year and it always worked.”

It’s not going to be easy. On the corporate level alone, Cisco participates in more than 100 exhibitions a year and spends about 22 percent of corporate marketing dollars on trade shows and events.

Yet even with so many events to strategize, Fehrnstrom opts to spend more time to develop close-working partnerships with show organizers who “want to work with us, rather than just collect our booth space money.” Which brings the story to show producer, MediaLive International.

The Interop event (then named NetWorld + Interop) in March 2004 seems an ideal choice for Cisco’s new approach. The show’s own business model is becoming more consultative and customized, as it integrates strategies to meet marketers’ changing needs. Its parent, MediaLive, believes strongly in measurement; annual audits present exhibitors and sponsors with extensive audience demographics that prove the value of an event.

The objectives of Interop — advanced technology and the Internet’s future — match Cisco’s strategy. And with the decline of COMDEX (also owned by MediaLive), Cisco realizes that Interop is driving a richer commercial audience than before. Five years ago, large enterprises made up 75 to 80 percent of the show’s audience, says Fehrnstrom. By 2004, small- and medium-sized businesses are strongly represented, and Cisco needs to address them in addition to their enterprise customers.

When Cisco dissects Interop’s audience, it realizes that 80 percent of attendees are current customers. What other Cisco products can enhance the network they already have? How can Cisco use Interop to get closer to customers and push them further along the sales cycle? And how can they do this without spending the show budget at one shot?

Fehrnstrom knows it’s important for Interop, a leading Internet show, to have Cisco, a leader in networking solutions and Internet technology, as a happy client. At the same time, Cisco’s marketing team, under increasing scrutiny, needs to justify its investment to executives.

It makes perfect sense, then, for the two to jointly brainstorm ideas about how to approach the show differently.

“These are very smart people who have been in the industry for years,” says Fehrnstrom about the Interop team. While most companies don’t share goals and objectives for competitive reasons, she says, “We know we’re a good client and, under a nondisclosure agreement, we can trust working with them.”

Over a series of meetings, Fehrnstrom, Interop Vice President and General Manager Lenny Heymann, and colleagues talk about the people most important to Cisco, the target audiences at Interop Cisco could be addressing and new approaches to take. These discussions come none too soon, as the show looms just months away. Ideas are presented, many eliminated, and the best finally catalogued in a menu.

Heymann encapsulates four points important to Cisco in a customized program:
1. Involve the field sales force in the event.
2. Develop and present quality content to the audience.
3. Set goals for audience segments.
4. Uncover new sales opportunities.

The program
Using the Interop database to Cisco’s advantage, Heymann and his colleagues come up with a “VIP” program called PowerPass, along with a full year of communication opportunities with Cisco’s prime customers and prospects. This provides a “more lingering effect” to its spending, Fehrnstrom says.

Through PowerPass, Cisco can target, invite and present attendees a series of benefits before and at the event. Cisco makes database selects that match desired profiles. Personalized e-mails direct invitees to a URL Cisco manages, where they can sign on to the program; this allows the company to identify attendees before the event. On site, signage directs PowerPass holders to a designated registration area run by Interop. Attendees receive special badging that gives them access to education Cisco develops, preferential seating for the keynote address by Cisco’s CEO John Chambers, and a private lounge. Cisco can post white papers and other information to a Web community, called Looper, which Interop is launching at the 2004 show. And Cisco leverages the Interop platform to meet with analysts and the media already coming to the show.

As a showcase of all things happening around the Internet, Interop is a stellar opportunity for the Cisco field sales team to demonstrate the company’s breadth of solutions. Through the PowerPass program, salespeople extend the sales cycle — inviting their best customers, through Interop’s database, to see Cisco products and meet with senior executives in meeting rooms right in the booth. Tech-savvy Cisco sales engineers are invited to serve booth duty and answer questions. And since 95 percent of sales go through Cisco’s partners, they’re given space in the booth.

The meeting rooms within the booth work “almost like an ‘executive briefing center’ on the road,” Fehrnstrom says.

To pay for the program, Cisco shifts its Interop investment, spending neither more nor less than the previous year. Instead, it opts out of banners and other traditional marketing opportunities and reduces its booth size (the booth is priced separately from this program). “We still can have a significant presence without going overboard,” Fehrnstrom says. “It’s a question of how to use the money we’re spending more wisely to further our relationship with customers.”

To make the effort a success on Cisco’s part, Fehrnstrom teams with a marketing/communications colleague, who corrals Cisco product specialists to ensure that activities and content to support strategy are relevant and works with trade show managers on execution.

Response and results
The program scores big for Cisco. With about the same number of Interop attendees year-to-year, mostly the same products, and marketing of the same database, 2004 leads and responses blow past 2003 numbers.

“Anyone who only looks at a trade show to bring in a sale is missing the larger marketing opportunity a trade show can really fulfill: to help feed the funnel and move contacts a step or two in the sales cycle,” says Fehrnstrom. “Leads are the nirvana, but another really good metric is spending ‘X’ dollars and acquiring 1,000 new contacts whom we can market to and close a sale in the future.”

Indeed, the PowerPass program clearly makes a big difference. Cisco knows it’s speaking better to the audience and providing more relevant information and experiences to customers. They, in turn, are more open to take the next step in the sales cycle with the company. And by taking time to dissect the audience, Cisco can focus on new, relevant solutions — such as security — that customers are seeking.

Fehrnstrom offers a hypothetical return-on-objective analysis that might be presented to Cisco’s chief marketing officer: 80 percent of ‘X’ attendees at Interop come to the booth and hear the company’s story, 75 percent respond and want to opt in to communication, 50 percent of those are net new contacts; additional awareness is reached through 121 articles, 10 press briefings, and three analyst meetings.

A major component of Interop’s engagement with customers like Cisco is a series of ROI reports. A great deal of time is spent querying attendees before and after the event, not just about what they’re in the market to buy, what vendors they are considering and what vendor contacts they’ve made the past year. Interop wants to know if and how an exhibitor, booth personnel and demos and activities impact buyers, explains Leslie Brand, Vice President, Corporate & Client Marketing, MediaLive. Six months later, Interop taps attendees again to ask about actual purchasing and conversion.

Year 2
Taking over the program and burnishing it for Interop 2005 is Lisa Burton, Manager of Integrated Marketing Communications for Cisco’s corporate events team. She sets out to create very definitive pre-show objectives and measures that align with Interop’s communication and messaging. She also seeks to widen Cisco’s exposure at the show and increase the relevance Cisco gains with attendees.

“The process is very collaborative,” she reports. “Interop’s team comes in with information on what attendees said went well and what they wanted, before we build internally a strategy and execution.”

What Cisco learns in Year 1: PowerPass badges are mailed to attendees before the event. What sounds like a good idea doesn’t work, as many participants forget to bring the mailed credentials to the show. PowerPass participants also say they wanted early access to the Cisco booth so this component is added.

On the other hand, the PowerPass lounge — in the conference area outside the trade show floor — remains one of the most successful program components. It allows PowerPass holders to rest, refresh and return e-mails in a wireless environment.

Burton presents a proposal to Interop that adds the early booth opening and increases the number of PowerPass holders from 336 the first year to 775 the second. Knowing the penetration Cisco wants, Burton works with her team to target individuals, levels, company types and company sizes from the Interop database. 

Year 2 results are equally impressive. Cisco exceeds by 55 percent its 2005 goal of 5,100 total responses from those attending Interop.

Cisco’s measures, though, are much more extensive, Burton explains. Cisco also quantifies the number of booth executive briefings, meetings with press, meetings with analysts, PowerPass individuals taking part in the program, those watching over the Internet a live product announcement at the booth, the attendee response to theater presentations, and the response of 36 partners in the Cisco booth.

The cost of the PowerPass program does increase the second time around. Pricing the first year “really was a guesstimate, which Interop found was on the low side,” Burton says. In the second year, Cisco lays out its proposal and defines its budget, and Interop responds with its best offer of program components at a single price, with a discount for its trusted partner.

Burton does plan to make some changes in 2006. One of the benefits for PowerPass participants is preferential seating for the Cisco CEO’s keynote. Unbeknownst to Burton, these attendees are put in a holding area before being seated. She sees this as a missed opportunity for Cisco to provide food and beverage and have its executives there to mix with key customers.

Also, Cisco does not know that other Interop programs are taking place at the same time as its customer event for Power-Pass participants (causing a conflict for Cisco executives). Nor is it aware that an Intel event precedes and overlaps the Chambers’ keynote, causing attendance to suffer.

In the first year, with only a few months of lead time, Interop places responsibility for the program with a single staff person. For the second year, Burton’s contact at Interop changes three times, from the marketing manager on the concept, to the account manager on points in the program, to a third person serving as the program lead. Still, the transitions go relatively smoothly, and Burton is “quite pleased” with the partnership.

Clearly, the shift in how third-party show producers treat bellwether companies is advancing a more synergistic relationship. For Heymann, “Cisco is one of our largest customer and we’re eager to walk another mile with them. We’ll do everything we can to understand their goals and objectives and accomplish these through Interop.”

And one of the key reasons that Cisco and Interop can sit down together as partners, Fehrnstrom says, is that “we are both about value. When you have a situation that’s mutually beneficial, both sides win.”