American Express - Gets and Gives Credit

Another successful collaboration ends in accolades for our team's performance at CES 2010.

Since 2005, American Express’ OPEN Tradeshow channel has been a terrific source of profitable, high wallet, net new Charge Accounts. In 2009, we began broadening our approach, seeking to drive deeper awareness, consideration and customer engagement in the channel to compliment our success with acquisitions.

As part of that larger effort, I'm thrilled to share some highlights and initial results from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which took place in Las Vegas January 7-10, 2010. As many of you know, this show was the first time the OPEN Forum and Tradeshow teams collaborated to bring OPEN Forum to life in the tradeshow environment. The teams created a unique experience for CES attendees and OPEN Forum readers through an interactive booth experience, robust speaker series, and live blogging and tweeting from the show. This was an exciting event which brought relevant business tips and tools to prospects and Cardmembers at CES, and to those following the show online.

Highlights of the show include:

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  Our largest Tradeshow footprint ever, including acquisition stations, terminals with live access to OPEN Forum, and touchscreens with interactive sales collateral
  
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  The full launch of OPEN's new handheld devices in Tradeshows, which enable electronic Card applications and instant decisioning capabilities


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  The first OPEN Forum Tradeshow speaker series, with Tony Hsieh, Guy Kawasaki, Anita Campbell, John Jantsch, Ben Parr, and Barbara Dybwab speaking directly to prospects and customers in our booth


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  Our first live blogging and tweeting on OPEN Forum from the tradeshow floor about the OPEN booth activities and CES product highlights
  

A test of exciting new booth premiums, including a Kindle sweepstakes and excerpts from Seth Godin's new bookEarly results exceeded expectations:

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  430 new Charge Card applications, the most applications ever received at CES



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  Over 425 attendees at the speaker series over 4 days
  
  
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  30,486 page views for all CES-related pages and articles to the OPEN Forum CES experience page



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  413 unique Twitter users used the #opences hash tag on tweets during CES. Their tweets reached a combined following of 1,046,478 users
  

CES articles posted to Open Forum during CES continue to drive traffic post show. For example, Anita Campbell's article "10 Tips I Got from Kawasaki at CES" (posted 1/9) has generated over 7,750 page views and 622 tweets to dateWe have strong survey results from customers and prospects who visited the booth:

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  80% of all respondents scored their overall experience a 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10



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  45% of respondents said they are very/extremely likely to seek out additional information about other OPEN offerings
  
  
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  43% of respondents said they are very/extremely likely to visit OPENForum.com after the event
  

42% of Cardmember respondents said their experience will change how they use their CardsQuotes overheard during CES at the OPEN booth include:

• "You have something special for me? Really? That's amazing."

• "I want to get a Card because of OPEN Forum..." - Prospect (who later applied for a Platinum Card)

• "Signing up for OPEN Forum is a 'no brainer' " - Platinum Cardmember

Please join me in thanking the OPEN Forum and Tradeshow teams for their terrific collaboration in making this unique experience come to life for our prospects and Cardmembers. I'd also like to thank Momentum, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Federated Media, Czarnowski and Ogilvy Action for all of their help making this event a success.

Nancy Hood, VP of Marketing - American Express

Czarnowski IT presents at Lotusphere

Every year, nearly 6000 IBM Lotus Notes professionals gather for Lotusphere, the annual Lotus technology conference. It's a week long conference of Lotus Notes training, vendor showcases, and networking from the best minds in the Lotus Notes and Domino community.

For the third time in six years, Czarnowski's Declan Lynch was a presenter. He gave a training class on utilizing a new technology within Domino called XPages. Declan is widely known as an expert in this technology, having given numerous talks at user groups around the country, as well as authoring a 53 part series on getting started with XPages in your own environment.

In addition, Declan was recognized as a finalist for best Open Source application at OpenNTF.org, the open source community for Lotus Notes and Domino applications.

This entry certainly falls into the What....is Next category.

Czarnowski Adds Branding Extension in a Permanent Way

In recent years, St. Jude Medical has undergone an inspiring brand renewal, taking their new look and feel to the show floor and threading it throughout their marketing and promotional initiatives.

The next logical phase of their brand extension required integration of their messaging and mantra into the hallways and offices of their corporate headquarters in St. Paul Minnesota. Who better to take on the project than Czarnowski?!

Having a deep understanding of the brand, the audience and the desired experience, our team delivered an inspirational and exceptional environment. Highlights follow:

Client: St. Jude Medical Project: Corporate Headquarters – Permanent Installation (August 2009)

Czar Services Provided: Design, CAD, Acct/Program Management, Fabrication, Graphics, Transportation/Logistics, Install & Dismantle

Objectives:

Update St. Jude’s corporate headquarters in keeping with their overall brand direction while meeting the needs of three distinct audiences: employees, customers and shareholders. The desired reaction should reinforce the type of company St. Jude is and its culture. The branding elements should convey the essence of St. Jude as a leader in the industry without being obvious or self important. The environment should extend the brand promise from the heart of the employees to the heart of their customers which ultimately land in the hearts of their patients. The experience should reveal a deep understanding of their customers’ need for controlling and containing risk in the moments that matter most, those where a single moment during a procedure can make all the difference. Fostering a diverse and loyal community of brand stewards is the ultimate goal.

Strategy:

Give extensive consideration to and deploy deep due diligence toward each audience that works in and passes through the environment. Identify and understand what motivates each audience while they move through the space; determine the desired reaction to the experience; and design and incorporate elements that respond to both emotional connections. The following profiles drove the solution and results:

- Employees are motivated by the culture and they want to enjoy going to work in a pleasand and supportive environment; they want to make a difference in the world around them; and they want to be reassured that St. Jude’s is doing well as a company.

- Customers are motivated by relationships and need to trust the company and its products; they need assurance that they will have more control and less risk during medical procedures; and they need to know that their patients will be the ultimate benefactors of the partnership.

- Shareholders are motivated by results and expect stability and vision; they require that the company is socially responsible and environmentally aware; and the need to know that it is a good place for employees to work.

Solution:

The lobby was designed to elicit a shared cultural and brand experience for both visitors and employees while connecting visually and emotionally to the other spaces in the building. The lobby’s centerpiece an exquisite piece of interactive art that tells the stories of patients, customers and employees. These stories are told with passion, intensity and honesty; they come together as the face of St. Jude’s brand. Elsewhere, the elevator lobbies carry the brand thread and emotional connection via a high-level introduction of the specific floor specialty. The peer-to-peer areas offer motivation and foster collaboration based on the specifics of the teams. The hallways and corridors drive emotional connections with St. Jude’s brand by showing how the company and its people are making a difference every day. Various technologies, materials, textures, etc. were used to create an experience that is singularly powerful.

Results:

An environment that achieves the desired spectrum of emotions and inspiration: intensity, control, precision, innovation, intuition, focus, quality, experience, consistency, respect, passion, simplicity and humanity. In addition, the project was delivered on time and on budget.

Revolutionary Thinking at Czarnowski San Francisco

Recently, Czarnowski had more than 130 clients, prospects and industry friends converged on our Northern California office to experience "what2009" a series in client interaction and technologies. This year's event was proclaimed as "A Day of Revolutionary Thinking".

The full-day event included a roster of superb speakers; an interactive showcase of emergent technologies; a diverse display of products and services; and networking nirvana amidst a constant flow of great eats and drinks.

Speakers

The main event featured a trio of educational sessions given by four remarkable thought leaders in the world of marketing. Our very own Tom Frisby partnered with Mark Watson of Measure Inc. to show how strategy and measurement can come together to drive success in the face to face arena.

Next, Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple Computer and current venture capitalist, gave an entertaining, insightful and infectious presentation on ‘The Art of Intrapreneurship and Innovation’.

For “The e-Watercooler,” Megan Casey, CEO of Squidoo.com and highly regarded online community leader, demonstrated in real-time how to use new media to engage an audience and keep them involved in the conversation long after an event or show.

New Stuff

Between sessions, attendees were encouraged to network, visit vendors and dive into interactive demos to find out what’s new in the world of technology. Czarnowski partner Reality Engineering was onsite to give guests a real-time demonstration of electronic collateral distribution. Several computer kiosks were set up throughout the facility to offer paperless access to marketing materials from Czarnowski and attending vendors.

Guests were able to scroll through the options, choose the materials they wanted and instantly email themselves a link to the selected files. What a welcome replacement for the piles of paper and stacks of brochures that often clutter the show floor and storage closets! It’s simple, quick, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly – plus it provides valuable data on who has accessed specific materials. Stay tuned for more info on this system – we predict it will be a winner with our clients.

Another interactive demo featured a high tech, highly customized version of a popular old arcade game…Skee-Ball. At the computerized game station, guests were prompted to answer questions about their marketing strategies. Each answer earned a turn at the game using a Wii controller to propel the virtual Skee-Ball. This interaction showed how the amazing power of play can bring a whole new level of engagement to a show or event --- while delivering important content and capturing important data.

Partnership

In addition to Reality Engineering, several Czarnowski partners supported and had a presence at what2009 including: AV dimensions, Brand Via, Cort Event Furnishings, Alejandrino Partners, Ardent Impressions, Barbara Llewellyn Catering, Dazian Fabrics and Dave Barten Production Services and Lighting.

Teamwork

It was no small endeavor to pull this great event together and it truly took a team of folks to pull it off. From our San Francisco Office, a special thanks to Kim Merkin for leading the charge; Melissa DeLong for attending to all of the details; Jeff Smith from Chicago for plugging everyone in before, during and after the event; our amazing NorCal and SoCal teammates for their priceless contributions.

We can now add this event to a long list of successful affairs where we actually "practice what we preach"!

Stay tuned for more to come in the following months. Happy Holidays!

Revolutionary Day!

This is the 3rd such event that Czarnowski has produced for our customer and prospect audience that highlights, not just new electronic technology, but also introduces some of the latest ideas in Marketing, Social Media and Measurement through some of our stellar "expert" friends. See who's Talkin.....

Guy Kawasaki's newest book, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition (Portfolio, Penguin Group), was released on October 30, 2008. Reality Check is his all-in-one guide for starting and operating great organizations-ones that stand the test of time and ignore any passing fads in business theory.
Guy Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web.
Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Mr. Kawasaki is the author of nine books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.
Guy Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Megan is a founding member and the Editor in Chief of Squidoo. Before starting Squidoo, Megan spent 6 years in book publishing, most recently at the Portfolio business books imprint of Penguin Group, USA. Megan is now widely regarded as one of the most inspiring community leaders online (and, irrelevantly, the youngest).

With more than 30 years of industry experience, Tom is an accomplished creative leader within the environmental design community. He leads Czarnowski’s think(form) design team in providing a full range of creative, strategic and tactical services to customers. He is best known for his focus on creating Brand Architecture and a Brand Experience, not architecture for the sake of architecture. Some of the accounts that Tom has recently worked on include: IBM, Toyota, Lexus, Bausch & Lomb, Eli Lilly & Purdue Pharma.

Mark Watson is principle of MeasureINC, a consultancy firm specializing in experiential analysis and design of trade, consumer and retail environments

This event is wholly in line with our overall vision...."Czarnowski will create and sustain the highest level of service and customer experiences through our unique and passionate culture. " We love what we do.

To learn more about our culture, our atitude, and our services, please visit www.czarnowski.com

It's our Constitution Day!

This year marks the third anniversary of Czarnowski's Constitution Day. It's more than a mission statement, this Constitution of ours is something special. From our customers' perspective, it is a declaration of our collective pride and a representation of a unique and passionate culture. It is an affirmation of our respect and gratitude for those who laid the foundation and a roadmap for those who will come after us. Constitution Day is fundamental to Czarnowski’s very existence.

It is our Vision in Motion – it is a day that we come together as Czar Nation to re-commit and re-focus on what we stand for, how we’re doing and where we’re going. It’s a day to reflect on our core values and recognize why Czarnowski has been around for more than 60 years. This is a day to re-energize and re-dedicate ourselves in ‘Being It’ every day. The best way to predict the future is to create it. Every single day, each one of us has the privilege and power to make a positive difference and to create a better future for ourselves and our customers. For more info on our "Constitution" please contact mcooper@czarnowski.com

Czarnowski and the "Science of Sleep"

Check out the latest in our permanent installation category...In association with Eight, Inc., Czarnowski creates another successful retail environment.

This permanent showroom fabrication and installation is unlike most mattress stores, customers won’t find quota-driven sales people at Sleep to Live. At the store’s entrance, a virtual concierge (her image is projected on a screen)greets customers in the “decompression zone” and explains the store’s concept and layout - three experience zones and a retail area. Customers then embark on a self guided “choreographed discovery path,” punctuated by graphic and digital media displays, interactive screens, test beds and helpful store associates.

The interactive technology allows for an in-depth customized experience not found elsewhere - a main reason why Sleep to Live bills itself as the world’s first scientific sleep store.

In the “sleep discovery” area, interactive displays help customers learn how to achieve quality sleep. The “bed and pillow discovery” zone, a screened room where a diagnostic bed analyzes individual customers (or pairs) in order to recommend a sleep surface and pillow.

Customers can lie down on a Sleep to Live diagnostic bed to be measured and analyzed. In less than 10 minutes, the bed will determine precise pressure points establishing ideal alignment for the individual’s skeletal-muscular system, and will suggest which mattress and pillow is the best fit for them.