Best Dealer, Salesforce or Business-to-Business Campaign
Agency: George P. Johnson
Campaign: Cisco Global Sales Experience (GSX)
Client: Cisco
Cisco’s growth is driven by a 21,000-person global sales force. Training, education and achievement recognition are key to continued development of this critical team and their efforts to protect and elevate Cisco’s market share.
Cisco celebrates the contributions of its sales team an annual event known internally as GSX – Global Sales Experience. More than a stale conference in a static location, GSX 2010 was a hybrid event leveraging both virtual and physical properties to reach, engage and motivate Cisco’s salesforce and support personnel, including C-level executives and global managers.
Objectives for the event were to drive awareness around Cisco technology, educate attendees about its value to the enterprise and increase collaboration.
Evolving from the previous year’s 100% virtual event, 2010’s Global Sales Experience (GSX) took on a hybrid “hub and spoke” model that delivered the message ‘Together We Can’. A broad spectrum of content was delivered virtually via the web, through mobile devices and at local employee events worldwide. This integrated combination delivered a globally consistent but locally relevant message across the company.
The GSX experience began two weeks prior to the event with “The Hunt” alternate reality game. The multi-channel multimedia puzzle allowed thousands of global contestants to collaborate in searching for clues all over the world while also serving as a lead-in to the first day of the program.
A mix of keynote presentations, entertainment, breakout sessions, exhibitions and networking events were used. Local Cisco offices hosted in-person group sessions connected via its Telepresence technology. The local events delivered team recognition, with managers rewarding winning salespeople in front of their colleagues.
Social media was utilized throughout the event, allowing attendees to find content and network with one another while adding their own voice and perspective.
More than 20,000 delegates attended. Campaign extensions were held in 1,100 conference rooms, in 168 locations, in 69 countries across 24 time zones and supported by thousands of attendees online and off.
There were nearly 18,000 unique attendees in the virtual platform, with 62,513 virtual session sign-ins. More than 130 hours of live broadcast was generated from six Cisco TV production facilities worldwide. Eighty-five sessions were conducted over 101 event hours across seven days, while 50 exhibitors participated in the virtual Solutions Showcase trade show.
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