Mobility Programming, Experiences & Speakers

Task: Creating a Platform for Mobility Thought Leadership

Client: Mercedes-Benz

Situation

Large organizations dedicate more resources each year to digital and cultural transformation as a result of an identified need to be authentic and open in their innovation efforts. In the same vein, they also want to actively involve their employees and external thought-leaders, entrepreneurs, and creatives. But how do you bring all these objectives under one roof and openly demonstrate your commitment to a better, sustainable future? As a multi-year sponsor of SXSW, Mercedes-Benz was now ready to put front of stage their commitment to innovation in mobility, cities, global climate, work, and life. To achieve this, they developed the meConvention, “a future-facing lifestyle event” that was held for the first time in Frankfurt in 2017 during the IAA (International Auto Show). Now, an annual gathering, it has evolved into a ‘future lab’ for exploring major issues and promising ideas for the betterment of society, business, science, and our planet. For their 2017 inaugural event, the events team at Mercedes-Benz and their event agency Liganova needed support sourcing premier speakers, developing new ideas for sub-themes and panels, and a strategy for creating an active dialogue with global innovation communities to drive awareness of the event and get notable innovation influencers in attendance.

Solution

Working with the events teams at Liganova, Mercedes-Benz, and SXSW, we provided an analysis of the initial event programming and content framework and highlighted several thematic gaps. We then introduced our recommended programming strategy for bridging different thematic concepts and topics together to complement the broader program goals. Then we put that strategy into action and developed multiple panels such as the On-Demand Economy, which featured our partners Lyft, SkyHi, and Bot.co who discussed the impact and upside of the gig-economy and ‘shared services’. In total, we sourced and curated a group of 14 speakers from our network including entrepreneurs, creatives and thought-leaders to lead panels, hold keynotes and develop workshops.

But what’s an event without the right people in attendance? To rally the innovation community in Germany and Europe behind the meConvention, we worked with co-working spaces, startup organizations, and influencers to spread the word organically and drive excitement for this inaugural event.

Result

The teams created five novel concepts to be catalysts and vehicles for driving cultural change inside the organization. Three of these solutions were tested from which two have been green-lit to be used within selected departments. Overall, due to the close-knit collaboration necessary for each teams success, our remote setting in the mountains and our engaging exercises, BMW’s cultural leaders emerged from the week as a team, not just individuals tasked with similar marching orders. The action-oriented to-do’s coming out of our time in the mountains allowed them to focus on executing cultural change right when they were back in the office, versus having long meetings to build consensus b”

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Key influencers to the event.