Have you ever considered integrating live events into your brand engagement programme?

Whether it’s to raise the profile of your company, to communicate brand values to your staff or to give a burst confidence to your sales force, we at FMI know that live events are an exciting way to motivate and engage with your audience. This month, we have been busy rolling out several high impact programmes with interactive games and UK road shows to help establish and maintain brand loyalty. It’s been pretty event-ful! Our experienced events management team are good at being creative and always take an integrated approach with social media for more effective engagement. #checkusout

Let us treat YOU to an awesome experience! Enter this month’s competition by answering the question below.

Closing Date: 31 May 2012

While on our website, why not also check out our Top10Tips on delivering high impact to your live events? If you want to learn more about how we can help you make your brand an awesome experience, then get in touch. We’re always online and full of great ideas.

1. PURPOSE Live events are an exciting way to motivate and engage with your audience, but are only effective when they provide you with a desired result. Understand the key objectives of your event and identify the results you’d like to achieve.

2. IN THEIR SHOES Remember that your audience is as keen as you are to get something out of the event. Think about how you want them to feel before, during and afterwards. Walk through the event as if you were the attendee.

3. DEVIL IN THE DETAIL Reinforce brand values and other key messages in unique ways throughout the event. Little details count, so take the time to make your invitations, teasers and event theme stand-out and engaging.

4. BE DARING Just because you have always done it one way doesn’t mean you can’t change it. The audience will remember the things that stand out and are memorable from the rest of the event. Push the boundaries and don’t be scared to make it different, but stay on brand.

5. MAKE IT COUNT Be creative to engage, but don’t go overboard. Make sure everything is relevant to your audience so that your event strengthens your brand. Fun but irrelevant items are confusing and can give the wrong message.

6. IT’S ABOUT TIME Manage time efficiently. Be realistic and build in a contingency for the unexpected. Allow people time to themselves for networking, no one likes to be treated like sheep!

7. INTEGRATION  Take an integrated approach to communication across multiple platforms. Promote and communicate your event using social media, apps, web and text. Communication is King.

8. MONEY Set yourself an overall budget and communicate this to all parties involved. Build in a contingency for the unexpected. If you don’t spend it, carry it over to your next event.

9. REVIEW Follow up with attendees and ask for feedback. Take the time to measure your event’s success by reviewing what worked and what didn’t. Take action on any negative feedback.

10. SHARE RESULTS Communicate post event results or feedback and circulate to all. Be open and allow everyone to contribute their thoughts in preparation for the next event.

Your Corporate Event should be a brand engagement opportunity to maintain brand loyalty and motivation among your audience. Don’t be afraid to be creative, but be sure to keep event items relevant to your brand message. At FMI we offer strategic consulting to create high impact live events – great ideas that produce better results. Get in touch now and we can help you make your brand an awesome experience.

With best regards,

DAVE BALL
EVENTS DIRECTOR
david.ball@fmigroup.co.uk

John Fisher explores what it is like working as a comms/events agency in the run up to the greatest show on Earth, the London 2012 Olympics

Driving into work recently in the heart of Oxfordshire, going northwards I might add, I noticed for the first time a flashing message on the overhead motorway sign: ‘For Olympic events, plan your journey to arrive on time’. This was curious on many levels. The Games do not actually start until 27^th July. The nearest Olympic venue is 65 miles away, in completely the opposite direction. And the message itself suggests very strongly to me that there are going to be significant travel issues for visitors in London, come July.

But let’s start at the beginning. London won the 2012 bid in 2005 against stiff competition from Paris, by 54 votes to 50, so a close call. The various UK committees were then formed to start planning the resources it would require. By 2010 UK events UK agencies got very excited about the potential event business spin-off possibilities. After all, some £700 million of sponsors’ budgets had been pledged to the London Olympics, all to be spent in and around Games activity. Coca Cola itself accounted for around £45m alone. So we all trooped off to various industry briefing sessions about how to make the most of this ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’.

But it soon became clear that to enjoy the profits boom you had to be a member of the ‘Olympic Club’. And if you weren’t already in the club, you were too late to join it anyway. The thing is the Olympics is a very closed shop. The only way in is to be associated with a sponsor or partner. To be a sponsor a corporate needs to have paid tens of millions upfront to have the promotional right to be associated with the Games. Then they pay for the tickets. Then they pay for the accommodation. All on top of the sponsoring fee. I attended a briefing session where sponsors admitted that they were spending as much again on implementing their right to be associated as they were on the actual permission itself. So all the logistics, event planning, hotel costs, promotion were over and above the basic rights fees. Of course this is great news if your client is already a sponsor as they will need someone to organise the nitty gritty. Hooray! But not so good if you happen to have no Olympic-linked clients.

The other issue, as far as being a domestic event management company is concerned, is that there is a travelling circus of Olympic-events specialists who wander the Globe, going from Olympic destination to Olympic destination, accredited by the Olympic movement to handle Olympic-related projects. So in a pitch situation to handle the local implementation you can probably guess who is going to be the more impressive resource to choose in a straight competition. Most of these specialist agencies have already moved on to Rio for 2016, leaving just a handful of consultants in the UK now with implementation being handled by local ‘grunts’ and temp agencies.

So what we are left with is the ‘happy few’ agencies who are fortunate enough to already have Olympic-sponsoring clients and the vast majority of UK agencies who don’t.

1.      A COMPONENT OF ENGAGEMENT Individual and team recognition are key elements in any effective staff engagement programme. People respond to people, so in large organisations the trick is to keep it personal.

2.      WHAT TO RECOGNISE Don’t recognise at random. Praise staff carrying out specific core values both internally and externally, but avoid excessive recognition of behaviour that not everyone can achieve.

3.      ONLINE SUPPORT Create a portal for recognition that communicates personally and dynamically. Keep the information updated and topical so staff can see that you are not guilty of the ‘launch-it-and-leave-it’ syndrome.

4.      REWARD APPROPRIATELY Rewards are a powerful reinforcement of desired core values behaviour but they should be token and not a cash substitute for salary. Dedicate a rewards budget annually to underpin a sound recognition programme.

5.      COMBINE VALUES WITH IDEAS Boards often ask how ROI can be measured with such a ’soft’ programme. Include rewards for core value ideas that either save the organisation cost or increase revenue. Recognise economic suggestions as well as values behaviour to maintain a full circle of engagement.

6.      GO MOBILE There are now more mobile phones in the world than there are people. Think about your staff profile in terms of how they use media and consider if a ‘recognition app’ will work in your environment, especially for staff who are not tied to a desk.

7.      LET EVERYONE KNOW If someone performs above the average make sure everyone knows. Provide end of quarter or end of year ’special awards’ with involvement from senior management. You will be amazed how even a lunch with the ‘big boss’ improves attitude and performance.

8.      REVIEW AND REWORK Few people get it right the first time so ask staff what they think of the programme for ongoing improvement. Participants are flattered to be asked their opinion and almost always the ‘revised programme’ is significantly better than the one created in the HR/Marketing vacuum.

9.      THINK PROMOTIONALLY Like with all effective communication programmes, change your message regularly. Emphasise different aspects, tie into national celebrations and sports events. Refresh the content so that your programme is constantly relevant to your staff’s everyday working lives.

10.    THINK LATERALLY One size rarely fits all so consider having several recognition programmes. You may have one for junior staff and one for senior staff. Or one for manufacturing and one for retail. The only limit to how effective a programme can be is your imagination and the willingness to try the untried.

Your Staff Recognition programme should be an effective communication channel between you and your staff that is both personal and dynamic. At FMI we offer strategic consulting to create customised solutions – great ideas that produce better results.

With best regards,

JOHNFISHER
MANAGING DIRECTOR

john.fisher@fmigroup.co.uk

How does your brand use recognition and rewards to engage with your staff?

At FMI we appreciate that a special thanks goes a long way. This month, we’ve been busy developing a series of bespoke recognition programmes that improve staff engagement and reinforce core brand values. Our dedicated programmes management team recognises the importance of producing a personal and dynamic communication channel for more immediate and effective engagement.

Enter this month’s competition by answering the following question and replying in the comment box below.

What is the most creative way that you’ve been thanked by your company or peers?

Closing Date: 30 April 2012 – Sorry, this competition is now closed!

While on our website, why not also check out our Top10Tips on saying “thanks”? If you want to learn more about how we can help you better reward your staff then get in touch. We’re always online and full of great ideas.

Thanks,
The FMI Team
campaign@fmigroup.co.uk

Juggling the social marketing mix

The traditional lines between social life and business life are becoming so blurred that it’s hard to know where socialising stops and ‘networking’ begins. More to the point, do social media actually work as a way to market events and products or is it all just digital media industry hype?

So, I’m just on facebook organising the Easter family barbecue, as you do, and I get a ‘notification’ message from he-who must-be-obeyed. It’s written in caps so I guess he may be a little cross. It reads: WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED ORGANISING YOUR SOCIAL LIFE PERHAPS YOU COULD FIND TIME TO DO A BIT OF WORK, MY OFFICE PLEASE,IF YOU’RE NOT TOO BUSY. How the boss has become a ‘friend’ on my facebook is a little odd. I would prefer the term ‘vague acquaintance’ but this is not an option on the current site.

‘Digg, Flikr, Badoo, Xing, Gogoyoko…what does it all mean?’

At first I thought he was speaking while snacking again…an unattractive habit in anyone over 40… but I’d actually heard of Gogoyoko, the musicians’ site, so I understood him perfectly for once.

‘I was on Linkedin recently and there was a conference organiser in China who does all her business on Friendster and that includes taking the delegate fees. I also read that there are three times as many smartphones as there are laptops, globally speaking. So if we need to contact younger people to come to our paid-for events in future we need to think ‘smart’ and start doing stuff on phones otherwise we will miss out on the younger market. And if we go mobile, we need to be on social networking sites because no-one is going to download our massive events sites on a piddly, little handset, are they?’

It was a good point. The millennial generation, in marketing speak, has lost the art of talking when they want something. They would rather text, push a few buttons and then play games while they are waiting for the reply rather than actually call anyone or visit a website with all that password nonsense and expensive download fees.

‘So, go and find out how we can promote and run our next event via social media and tweet me as to how you are getting on. I am expecting you to say it is a cheap as chips…microchips, if you see what I mean. Ha, ha.’

I thought I would try Academia.edu, the social networking site for academics and scientists, and see if good old prof Cadwallader was in one if the chatrooms. He was.

‘Hi prof, sorry to interrupt the discussion about particle physics but can you give me some advice about social networking sites. We want to recruit delegates at no cost to our commercial events and thought doing it all on linkedin would be a good idea.’

‘Doing all your marketing for nothing would be great, wouldn’t it? But it’s not going to happen. Like all other marketing techniques, social media marketing has a cost but it’s more akin to PR than advertising in how you might measure its effectiveness or the time you have to put in.’

‘Do you mean we have to do lots of lunches and sponsor a charity?’

‘Not quite. The traditional way to market has been to pay for advertising or promotion on media. The trick was to find the media that matched your potential audience for a reasonable per contact cost. In theory customers then go to a retail outlet to buy your product. The more you spend and the more often you appear, the higher the sales. But with the advent of the Internet, especially B2B, there are many more ways to reach an audience than simply advertising… and of course many more ways to buy now, mostly online. So paying for advertising may be okay for mass media products but not so good for niche, business-to-business offers where the potential audience may well be only a few thousand at most.’

‘So, we need to cancel our advertising and send a bucket-load of tweets from now on?’

‘What you need to do is…carry on doing what you do, but add a social media element, especially if your event is very specific and would only appeal to a certain kind of buyer. Let’s not get carried away with obsessives like Stephen Fry and other celebrity types who communicate to keep in the public eye so they might get considered for new mass entertainment roles etc. What I am talking about is riding on the coat-tails of the facebook/texting phenomenon where 20-somethings realised that they could keep in touch with friends via their mobile phones very cheaply, initially by text, and then via social sites without having to be at home or chained to a desktop system. They formed friendship groups initially…so family, ex-uni contacts, sports clubs…but it wasn’t long before professional groups became the thing both to find out more about how to do their jobs and their industry issues but also to find new jobs. The networking skill was born.’

‘I can see that. But it’s pretty annoying when a ‘friend’ starts banging on about what a great oven-cleaner they have found, isn’t it?’

‘Absolutely correct. Which is why for B2B you have to identify what professional or business forums would be interested in your paid-for event and then gently introduce the idea of your event, well in advance. So, let’s say you are promoting the use of a new credit card for business people and you are running an exhibition about that very topic. You might join or better still invent an online forum about some aspect of business cards that annoys people such as ‘doing your expenses’. At some point in the discussion you slip in a link to your event and ask participants to let other people know who may be interested. Ask them what they would like to see in the ‘perfect credit card etc. Of course, it’s no good doing this with weeks to go. This is a long term strategy for your product so you would have been thinking about it six months out or more and have been sending informative messages from early on so that when it comes to crunch-time for your event lots of people already know what the event is…they just need a little nudge.’

‘This all sounds very time-consuming and detailed…’

‘Exactly. That’s why I said at the beginning that it’s a long-term strategy that relies on other people trusting you to give good advice, helping other people achieve their aims too and not just banging on about your credit card exhibition. And there is a resource cost too…someone has to do all that detail and ferret out what B2B forums would be useful for what you want to market. And just like life, no-one likes socialising with someone who will only talk about one thing. You need to be in dozens of forums to build a ‘community of supporters’ not just one. Because the more connected you are the more colleagues of colleagues will hear about it and the more sales you will get. You can recruit active bloggers to become ‘ambassadors’ for your event to help spread the word in all the right channels. But it is still only for marginal sales…don’t forget the more traditional marketing routes or you will come a cropper…because not everyone uses just social media for all their data. It is still a very mixed market, promotionally speaking. If you get 10% of your audience from this technique, you will be doing well.’

Well, as usual, it was fine advice. I’ve certainly now got a social media strategy for the boss. All he needs to do is do a funny dance dressed up like a credit card and fall over a few times and put in on You Tube. But the exhibition’s next month so better back it up with a few tweets. That was easy. Time for lunch, I think.

John Fisher is a director or FMI Group

john.fisher@fmigroup.co.uk

1. A NEW WAY Digital technology and the power of social communication are creating new ways to learn, share and train. It’s all about learning, not snoring!
2. MORE THAN E-LEARNING Social Learning is moving quickly away from the more traditional e-learning training modules that take hours to complete. Early adopters are embracing the immediacy of digital communications through social network communities and ambassadorial programmes.
3. MULTI PLATFORM Your Social Learning content can be accessed and shared through multi-faceted platforms. With ever improving smartphone technology and the proliferation of mobile devices in business, Social Learning takes place on both web and mobile platforms.
4. 360˚COMMS Disseminate information directly to your shop floor, call centre or field sales managers and immediately engage. Encourage upward channel responses for valuable insight into the front line and boost morale with peer to peer interactivity.
5. WHEREVER, WHENEVER Work hours are no longer Monday to Friday 9am till 5pm. Accessible Wi-Fi means learning can now take place on the train into the office, at the weekend in front of the TV and even in the middle of the night. Social Learning platforms are fully accessible no matter where or when your job is.
6. SOCIAL AMBASSADORS Embrace Social Learning and create non-employed brand ambassadors who reinforce your brand message to consumers. Listen to your ambassadors; consider their views and opinions and enable them to feel empowered.
7. COMPETITION Encourage interaction through your Social Learning platform community with product quizzes and insight videos. Create ‘healthy’ competition amongst peers by communicating targets, sharing leader boards and recognising sales persons of the week.
8. REWARD Recognition on its own is not always enough to reward an individual or store. Inexpensive prizes can enforce your brand positioning and will incentivise and motivate whilst encouraging participants to rise through the ranks.
9. TARGETED SOLUTIONS Your business has many key messages to reinforce on the front line. Use targeted campaign solutions to focus on each message, enhance sales staff training and increase product sales. Roll out a different campaign daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
10. TAKE ACTION Think carefully about your actions. Digest the data and reports generated by Social Learning and plan your next moves carefully. Are you addressing the needs of your staff on the front line and enabling them to drive your brand and products to market?

Your Social Learning strategy should provide your staff with the opportunity to both learn and share. Reward and recognition play a huge part but cash prizes aren’t the only approach. At FMI we offer strategic planning to create appropriate mixed-media solutions – great ideas that produce better results. Get in touch now and we can help you drive your brand to market.

clare.chadbund@fmigroup.co.uk

Fishersfile M&IT March: 25TH ANNIVERSARY

John Fisher was working in the financial services industry as an ‘incentives officer’ in 1987. His own ’25 year journey’ mirrors the growth of incentives and events from cottage industry to the major below the line marketing services discipline of today

I started my business career, after university, in a direct mail agency but soon got bored and just a tiny bit suspicious that every marketing problem could be miraculously solved by…guess what?… ‘direct marketing’. So I joined an insurance company on the marketing side to get broader business experience and became involved in devising ‘promotions’ for the 800-strong, commission-only sales force. I was only supposed to be doing the advertising but promotions and incentives were much more fun. They also did an annual incentive travel trip which at the time was handled by Limo. So I got that job too. Madrid and Marbella. My agency contact, because travel was far too hard for a corporate to organise back then, was a bearded, East-end Mr Fixit called Gerry York. I had no idea back then that incentives or conferences were even an industry. Insurance Mail , my industry sector magazine, used to do the occasional editorial piece about the latest travel event for Hambro Life which was then the largest direct sales force in the country. So I contributed a few articles to them about incentives from a corporate perspective. At the time I was only aware of two agencies that specialised in travel incentives, E F Macdonald…Graham Burt was my contact… and Limo. Most corporates ran their own schemes themselves and only really big players, like automotive manufacturers, used external agencies. It was 1987, some 25 years ago.

Page & Moy Motivation, 1989
In 1989 I met Tony Moy in a bar, as you do, and he explained to me that he ran big travel programmes but he was losing out in pitches to a competitor called Maritz who were able to write promotional brochures and even compile league tables of top performers so participants could see who was in the running to win. So I joined Page & Moy in Leicester to set up Page & Moy Motivation as a co-director. In our first week we confirmed Volvo and Commercial Union (now Aviva) so we were up and running. I hired Linda Piggott straight from university as an Account Executive for non-travel projects. I met Gerry York at an ITMA seminar and persuaded him to join the new business running events. Sally McGarvey was our most experienced events manager. John Sylvester joined from GRG to head up the motivation and computer services side. It wasn’t long before Tony realised that profit margins on non-travel were much higher than on travel so we expanded the promotional side of the business, hired Kevin Ingram as our sales director, invented Free Holiday Spending Money (a travel discount prize which involved giving half of our agents’ commission back to the holiday customer) and took on 12 new staff.  In 1991 I started to write for a new trade magazine, Meetings and Incentive Travel. My first article, some 20 years ago, comprised 10 tips to beat the 1990/91 recession…does that sound familiar? Over the next nine years we grew to 125 staff expanding the client offer to encompass conference production, corporate hospitality, consumer sales promotion, computerised data management services and dedicated teams under strict contract to manage all the events for one major automotive. We bought Brevis in Watford and Air Foyle in Luton, acquiring Freddie Guilmard into the bargain. Our biggest clients were in financial services. It was the age of the full service performance improvement agency.

By 1998 we were making some £800,000 a year pbt. But Tony and I began to tire of presiding over management committee meetings about ISO 9001, appraisal systems, new computer systems, ordering stationery and the inevitable intricacies of accounting so we sold it to the management team, even providing the link to Lloyds VC to help them do the deal. The Internet was just beginning to be used by corporates for communication and information exchange so any agency that could master the new techniques would do well. Just doing events was no longer enough to survive as a big player. In time the company listed on AIM and became Motivcom. Tony went off to start yet another package holiday company and I became a ‘consultant’.

The Motivation Consultancy, 1998
Since the early days I had always had my own side company called The Motivation Consultancy to handle any fees for articles, books, seminars etc which were nothing to do with my main job. So it became the perfect vehicle for my consultancy business now that I was precluded from acting as an ‘agent’ for two years as part of the MBO deal to PMM. During this period I wrote five books, acted as a company broker for various agencies in the business, spoke at seminars, started doing a non-exec director role for John Denham at Vantage Point…which still continues to this day… and did incentives research for various corporates. While all this was going on I met John Walker, Oxford International, and eventually twigged that he was based in Oxford…not obvious is it from the company name? And so was I, at the time. So I started to do a few days consultancy there in 2003. It wasn’t long before I was doing a full time job there and bought into the business as a shareholding director. In time it became obvious that the ‘performance improvement’ side of the business should be a separate entity as both the money and the manner of business were very different from an events company, so Oxford Motivation was born.

Oxford Motivation, 2005
We pootled along for a few years but it was clear that to get the bigger  PI projects we would have to overcome the ever-increasing demands of client procurement departments and, quite frankly, be  a lot bigger. At the time we only had 5 people which included Tony Moy as chairman, just in case we needed a wise head to consult with. A white knight arrived in the shape of The Indeprod People Company who had about 70 staff. So we sold out to them in 2007, became employees once more and moved to Buckinghamshire, near Thame. Then, just as things were going swimmingly, Indeprod collapsed!

Fisher Moy International, 2009
You may recall the dreadful Autumn of 2009 when events and incentives just stopped dead at the end of September. Indeprod lost three big clients within the space of a few weeks and the then main and only shareholder pulled the plug and the receivers were called in. Fortunately Oxford Motivation Limited had remained a separate legal entity and so we simply ‘carried on’, buying ourselves back from the receiver and persuading some of our old Indeprod colleagues to join us. It is now 2012 and we have about 25 people if you include our part stake in a design company. Our main clients are in the electronics sector and we have repositioned ourselves as ‘brand engagement specialists’ which is what we really do now. Of course we do events, doesn’t everyone, but the conversation normally starts with the brand not the bash.

Summing up the last 25 years? In 1987 it was okay to just do events. By 1997 you really had to be offering data and delegate management to retain the bigger projects with the Internet looming large. After the recession of 1999/2000 procurement came into its own so you also had to know your way around corporate approval systems to build a sustainable business. The recession of 2009 was a body blow for events-only businesses…you simply need to have saved cash to survive. By 2011, if you needed cash no-one was lending anyone anything, including the big banks.

What I learned from the last 25 years was to watch the market very closely, at least every month, and change the offer to suit the market, keep your access to cash clear at all times and match your staff to the 30-something profile of the main buyers. Despite what some posh agencies would have you believe, the successful ones simply mirror their clients, anticipate their problems and give them what they want, when they want it, at a reasonable price.

John Fisher is a director of FMI Group
john.fisher@fmigroup.co.uk

FMI’s Account Executive, Jessica Lee, talks about her recent Fam trip to Monte Carlo.

Not much beats Monte Carlo. As the administrative area within the principality of Monaco, it is small and compact but has a surprisingly impressive amount to offer with meeting rooms, banquet halls, and hotels to accommodate both small and large groups.

I was in for a real treat when I was invited to stay at the Hotel Hermitage for the weekend. This incredible property has had over 50 million Euros spent on refurbishments over a period of 3 years, so that it is not only an extremely luxurious leisure retreat, but also a strong competitor for meeting venues, incentives and events. The 5-star hotel is operated by SBM, which also holds in its assets the legendary Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo Bay and Monte Carlo Beach, plus 33 restaurants and bars, and five casinos. They truly are a one-stop shop.

The luxurious destination really speaks for itself, but it is not a hideaway for just the rich and beautiful. It is easily accessible from Nice Airport, either 30 minutes by taxi or 6 minutes by helicopter, and hotel rooms are as affordable as 100-250 Euros a night in the low seasons (January to March; October to December). For 5-star services, stunning balcony view of the yacht-filled harbour, sensational spa, mouth-watering food and mild winter climate (16^oC) it’s hard to reason why you would rather be elsewhere.

There is very little you cannot do in the principality; two hours from the harbour is a ski resort and 30 minutes away is a golf range. The Hotel de Paris entertains groups in their extensive private wine cellar, which holds 600,000 bottles of French wine, and together with the Hotel Hermitage hosts two 1-Michelin starred restaurants. There are great team-building opportunities, one in which I took part through the events agency Ekypage and consisted of running around Monaco in an hour-long activity with the help of a Samsung tablet, exploring the principality’s key landmarks and attractions while completing timed challenges in small groups.

I had a real treat of a weekend in Monte Carlo and I would like to extend my thanks to FMI for nominating me to go on the trip. There are lots that I have ticked off my bucket list: from staying at a 5-star hotel, dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant and receiving a luxury spa treatment, to dancing the night away at an exclusive club and experiencing a helicopter ride back to the airport in Nice. Thank you very much.

E-brochure Hotel Hermitage : http://www.montecarloresort.com/e-brochure/hh/
E-brochure Hotel de Paris: http://www.montecarloresort.com/e-brochure/hp/
E-brochure Monte-Carlo Bay : http://www.montecarloresort.com/e-brochure/bay/
E-brochure Monte-Carlo Beach: http://www.montecarloresort.com/BrochureBeach/

Some interesting facts that I learned during my time there:

1. Even with the expansion of Port Hercules, Monaco is only 2 square-kilometres wide and is the second smallest country in the world
2. Monaco’s citizens are prohibited by constitutional law to gamble in their own casinos
3. Only 2,000 people in Monaco are actual citizens of the principality
4. The Hotel de Paris wine cellar is so extensive that it covers grounds under both the Hotel de Paris and the Hotel Hermitage (400 metres apart); the oldest bottle of wine dates back to the 18^th Century
5. During WWII, Monaco prepared for the German invasion by locking up their most valuable paintings, jewels, and wines behind the heaviest gate in their wine cellar and filling the remaining space with empty/cheap bottles of wine. When the Germans arrived, they removed the first 2 metres of empty/cheap bottles of wine and decided that the room was filled with junk. After the war, the valuables were restored in their respective places, and only the aged wine was left locked up behind the gate. The key has since been lost and it is the hotel’s tradition to leave the gate closed to access. No replacement keys have been made, and no new gates have been fitted.

Many thanks to the Famtrip Hosts:
UGO DELORY, Business Development Director, SBM Monte Carlo
MARIE-LAETITIA LUCCIONI, Project Manager, SBM Monte Carlo

Challenge

“Ideal Heating came to FMI with the challenge to raise the profile their company and highlight the many features of their new range of Logic boilers within the UK market. They specifically wanted to communicate the benefits of a new product and its ease of servicing to nationwide installers and heating engineers.”
David Ball, Events Director

Outcome

• A UK roadshow inviting installers and heating engineers to complete in a timed challenge to service one of their boilers
• Hosted over 9 weeks at 30 UK go-karting venues with a race to win theme
• First launched at the Installer Live Tradeshow in Coventry, with a large event stand, boiler installation unit and glamorous hostesses
• Everyone that attended received a goody bag with promotional material
• Data was collected for use after the event as part of the follow-up

Impact

As a result of the road show, some 1,200 heating engineers and customers were exposed to the products and brand, whilst new business relationships were formed. This raised the profile of the company and products which fundamentally increased sales of the new Logic Boilers

DOWNLOAD IDEAL HEATING PDF