It’s time — IAITAM ACE 2018 kicked off yesterday in Orlando. I don’t know about you, but here at Dynamic, we’ve been preparing for this event for months. The budget was confirmed, event staff selected, travel coordinated, and all the booth and promotional materials have been delivered in Orlando and set up.
I also spent a reasonable amount of time putting the finishing touches on the session presentation, “Safeguarding Your Brand, and Your Job.” When the team brainstormed themes for our booth at IAITAM, we kept coming back to the word “safeguarding” from my presentation title, which led to the idea of putting prizes in lockboxes. Attendees can pick up a key at the opening keynote or in our booth #6 and try to open each of the boxes. Sounds pretty foolproof, right?
After months of prep work, we were feeling confident and ready to go to the conference. The team got together for one last IAITAM huddle up to ensure the booth staff had all the information they needed for the event. When we started talking about our “safeguarding” lockbox promotion, we realized we were missing one very key piece – we never received our master keys for the lockboxes. Even though the attendees would have keys, we didn’t have keys to put the prizes in the boxes.
Yes, we did work with a promotional company to help us coordinate purchasing the boxes, keying the locks, and cutting the keys to distribute to the attendees. You may be thinking, “it sounds like your promotion is all ready to go. You hired a company who specializes in this sort of thing, and it should all be taken care of.” But despite all of our preparation, we were still missing the “keys” to the success of the lockbox promotion.
Despite the short turnaround time required to solve this problem, our promotional company had our back. They stepped up, had their vendor cut three master keys for us right away – one for each lockbox – and overnighted them. The keys were in my pocket as the IAITAM conference kicked off. They protected our brand by going the extra mile to ensure the success of our promotion.
Can you say the same for your current ITAD provider? Are you confident that your ITAD partner is genuinely prepared for anything and will always go the extra mile to protect your brand? All of these questions and many more need to be contemplated before you choose a vendor. Getting this right is one of the best ways to protect your brand…and your job.
