The creative set is handed that directive all too frequently from customers who rely on them to bring something “box-shatter- ing” to the table with every new project or challenge.
When it comes to advertising, marketing, event planning - or design of any sort - clients always are looking to crush the norm and be trailblazers and trendsetters among their peers.
In the marketing world, there’s a push to be first to market with the best new product. In event planning, it’s the hottest decor or wedding photos (case in point: did anyone see the photo that went viral of that wedding party running from a T-rex?).
So with all this push to find the next big thing, how is it that the creative set doesn’t simply flame out with the sheer effort of con- stantly topping themselves?
According to Tore Fiore, executive director of the Brandywine Conference and Visitors Bureau (BCVB) in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, it isn’t always about thinking outside the box. Instead, he likes to flirt with the edge of that box.
“If you think on the edge of the box, you’re not going to scare people, and you’ll be able to get that edginess that a lot of people are afraid to take when they’re doing advertising, marketing, and special events,” says Fiore.
For Fiore, the focus should be more on looking for something better, not nec- essarily bigger. It’s about looking at what you already have and finding ways to improve it. “Thinking ‘out of the box’ is blowing the thing up and start- ing from scratch, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me,” he says.
For example, BCVB planned an event for five years called Riverfront Ramble. “The original concept was to promote
92 September October 2013
Think outside of the box
the city of Chester by doing an event on the river,” says Fiore.
Instead, he pushed for more. The bureau decided to include all five municipalities along the river and planned events up and down that stretch. There were concerts, kids’ games, pony rides, sailboat rides, and fishing contests. The all-day event con- cluded with fireworks over the water.
“So we took it from ‘let’s do a little con- cert in the city of Chester on the river’ to this gigantic event that brought about 15,000 people annually to it.” Fiore adds, “That’s just thinking on the edge of the box.”
Jeff Rudder, director of sales and mar- keting at the Omni Bedford Springs Resort and Spa in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania takes the approach “what’s old is new again.” Rudder relies on proven marketing methods to target his audience and messaging, but infus- es those tried-and-true practices with current trends and topics.
Rudder explains by citing the example of his targeting presi- dents of large corporations with tailored messaging. “We’ve had twelve [U.S.] Presidents come here.” In fact, the resort used to be known as James Buchanan’s “Summer White House.” “So why shouldn’t the presidents of these different organizations, these Fortune 100 companies that are in our backyard, come here, too? Why shouldn’t we host some of their presidents to hold meetings here on site, as well?”
That was Rudder’s challenge to his team. Take a proven tactic like direct mail and give it a cre- ative twist. The outcome was a successful direct mail campaign that tied the U.S. presidents’ stays to those current corporate presidents. The approach was a bit tongue-in-cheek, proactively addressing potential concerns about the age of the property by high- lighting all the resort’s modern techno- logical amenities.
When asked how he encourages his team to keep the creative juices flow- ing, Rudder humbly declines to admit influence. “I never really get pushback on looking at things differently. Often, we want to push that creative mindset, and I find that people want to get cre- ative themselves. People are looking to do things differently.”
When hiring his staff, Fiore says he looked for people who didn’t have experience producing special events. Instead, he looked for applicants from his target audience - folks with an abundance of business travel experi- ence under their belts who knew what they and their traveling peers were looking for from the hospitality and tourism industry. Then he trained them on his side of the business.
“You tell them how to put an event on, and once you got past that point... then they became knowledgeable about it.
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