Celebrating Your Brand
A party, gathering or social event is considered a success when lots of guests attend, stay and have fun. But, with corporate events the stakes are higher. They’re all about publicity, attracting high-profile guests, like President Obama, (more on that in a moment) and promoting the brand in hopes of increasing future sales.

MOVE Sets Clients’ Business in Motion
When MOVE received a call from Rebecca Fitzgerald, External Communications Director, Johnson Controls’ Power Solutions, to support the Grand Opening of their new Lithium-Ion Plant in Holland, Michigan, we were delighted. Why? Because we helped them with their strategic messaging and the creative to tell their lithium-ion battery story.

Plus, we love doing events. Take the North American Auto Show, as well as contributing to the Auto Shows in Frankfurt and Shanghai to name a few.  So, to help plan the event, handle media, and organize vendors in the local Holland area, we called on Jessica Westra of Jessica Westra Media Relations as a strategic partner.

Working as a team, the plan was put in place for the Grand Opening, but everything changed  when Fitzgerald received notice from the White House that President Obama would be visiting the facility the following week. Suddenly, the deadline went from a Grand Opening in one month to a Presidential Event in one week. Yikes. Get your security clearances and get to work!

Corporate Event vs. Political Event
Fitzgerald’s goal was to make this a world-class corporate event. To complement the main event—President Obama’s speech—every other element had to be clearly articulated, agreed to by security and the White House and then put into place.

The path that guests would take was identified—pass through security at the parking lot, and be received at a Johnson Controls event outside while guests were awaiting the President’s arrival, enter the facility, be seated and wait in anticipation of the President’s entrance.

“You want your event to meet guests’ needs, and more importantly, you want them to leave as Brand Ambassadors,” Westra said. “Your guests will tell people that day and even months after the event about the facility, why it is important to the community and its larger role in the economy.”

With that in mind, the Johnson Controls team and Westra made sure that information about the plant and company was readily available during the pre-event.  We developed fact sheets and created posters explaining Johnson Controls technology and the jobs the Meadowbrook plant would create.

Now all that was needed was the guest of honor.

Watch for next week’s post chronicling President Obama’s visit to Michigan.

*Photography taken by Morgan Anderson, http://www.morgan-anderson.com/