Case Studies
News Corporation
Management Conference — August 2006
The challenge: The planning team at News Corporation reports directly to Rupert Murdoch. He decided to plan and execute a senior management retreat in Pebble Beach, California for his top executives and their spouses. Once done internally, the company now had grown in the six years since the last retreat into a world-class communications giant, with over 200 separate holding companies. Their challenge was to create both a sense of community during the planning stages with the diverse, extremely well-traveled and high-level audience and to execute an event that would rival Paul Allen’s annual conference, which Mr. Murdoch attends.
Solution and performance: We proposed an event website that not only registered attendees, but included a real-time spa and golf booking tool, activity descriptions with real-time capacity control, a comprehensive speaker biography page with links to an online library of speaker articles, as well as an attendee forum and profile area mimicking News Corporation’s “MySpace” called “OurSpace.” We uploaded headshots for each invited attendee prior to launching this online site, thus beginning their profile in “OurSpace.” We asked the attendees to fill out their personal profiles as part of their registration process so all attendees could learn a little more about one another. We also posted engaging questions about business, global concerns, and fun topics on which the executives could comment and directed specific questions from or about speaker topics for attendees to review and debate.
What the client had to say: “When News Corporation stated planning for our conference in Pebble Beach, we knew it would be a difficult task. We needed to put together a program that would inspire and amaze our executives, a group that has seen it all over the years. Genesis Creative Group worked with us to facilitate and execute these events with support in the areas of on-site transportation, staffing, signage, registration and much more. They exhibited the highest standards of performance and through their hard work, creativity and execution, our event was a tremendous success.” Jeff Earl, Director of Event Planning, News Corporation.
Network General Corporation
Sniffer User Summit — November 2005
The challenge: Network General Corporation has 15,000 current customers, but was enveloped as a division of Network Associates until it received private investor funding in the summer of 2004. In the Fall of 2005, they decided to host their first-ever User Summit, not understanding the interest level of 15,000 customers who really had not been communicated to for many years. They asked Genesis to help them craft a program, registration engine and direct marketing campaign to generate interest, excitement and enrollment.
Solution and performance: Genesis was able to create a customized registration system that could scale upwards to 1000+ people, giving them choices of six different class tracks in three different levels of complexity of topic. Real-time class selections assisted the company in honing the messages customers and users wanted to hear. Along with this, we successfully launched a CALL FOR SPEAKERS and WHITE PAPERS from known users. The white papers, along with all conference course materials, were posted back onto the site and became a permanent source for user information to this day.
What the client had to say: “The team at Genesis is the most organized and professional we have ever worked with. The creativity and enthusiasm to the project is really what sets you apart. I’m just so glad you were on this project with us — we could not have done it without you!” Kara Wilson, Chief Marketing Officer, Network General Corporation