KB Meetings play a big role here within our system, especially because we roll up into communications for a global franchise business, in order to be able to keep everyone aligned and meeting our business objectives and priorities. We constantly have to use meetings as our mechanism to do that, and all of the training at the various levels that lead up to that messaging. If we did not have face-to-face, it is hard to get all of that out there anymore, even using technology and innovation.
Kati Quigley
‘We have external and internal [events], but they all lead to the bottom line.’
LS At Nike, our culture has always been very, very event-centric. Our company goals are really to drive innovation and create brand connections, and meetings and events touch every aspect of that. Our team is responsible for managing everything — leadership meetings, team meetings, product launches, media summits, sales meetings.
CP One of Cisco’s core principles of operation is collaboration, and meetings — whether they are physical or virtual, internal or customer-facing — are critical to getting business done.
SK We have a Spring Market and a Fall Market
— they are buying shows. We set up over half a million square feet of exhibit space. The interesting thing about that is, 40 percent of that show floor is corporate space where we are delivering the corporate message, and then the other 60 percent is product that we actually sell to the storeowners. Displaying that product, getting them to understand why they need to buy that product — all of that has to be done on the show floor. And really all of our education and major events that surround it also are talking about what we are doing for them in helping them to be successful and trying to influence them to change in ways that we feel are going to be critical to their success.
Where is your company in terms of implementing SMM practices?
CP We have been on the journey for almost four years, and today have in place a fairly mature global SMM program, with service teams in the Americas, APJC [Asia-Pacific, Japan, and China], India, and EMEAR [Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Russia]. It is fully operational, encompassing policy compliance, leveraged sourcing,
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contracting, approvals and payment processes, website design, housing management, full-service logistics planning with on-site delivery, payment processing/reconciliation, evaluation services, spend, and compliance reporting. The key to any measure of success for us has been a strong policy with both internal and external partner support.
KB I am actually in phase one of the implementa- tion. We have spent the last 18 months bench- marking with all of these great individuals you are talking to on the phone, who helped me get where I am at right now. From our perspective for a global brand, we were at the bottom when it came to centralizing our sourcing and contracting process, trying to mitigate as much risk as possible. And then when you talk about how you go about leveraging funds and putting your meetings at the right places — it goes back to, if you do not have the right data and the metrics to tell your story, it is very hard to go in and be able to leverage that brand. When we first started the program, the one
thing that I heard globally was, “Could we just plant it one place where we have a master calen- dar?” You put management on events that you want them to be at, and their schedule gets so full that you have people canceling meetings because management was not available. It is just little things like that that started the process.
KQ That is funny, Kelley, that you said that. I have spent years in my previous job here at Microsoft trying to get one central calendar, and it is almost impossible just with the volume of events. We were scheduling over each other. We do not have a formal SMM program, but we do follow a lot of the principles of it and have for quite a few years through the partnership the central marketing events team has with procurement.
LS Like Kati, we do not have a formal SMMP. However, because my team is the corporate resource for meeting management here at Nike, we have implemented SMMP within our scope of responsibilities. We have put a lot of things in place, like a meeting-registration tool, and we have been working on technology and building a framework to track and report meetings. We put a lot of standardizing practices and a lot of those tools and processes in place, such as centralized sourcing and hotel contracting. I think the biggest