Client

MeriTalk – Federal IT on a Budget Forum

Situation

With the economy in ruins, increasing pressure on the government to play nurse maid, and falling tax revenues, it is a new era for Federal government IT – particularly as the new Administration spotlights the appetite for change. Government is looking at budgets and re-evaluating business-as-usual harder than it has in decades. These may be the first true "soup" years for Federal IT.

With this backdrop in mind, MeriTalk – working with platinum sponsors Cisco, DLT Solutions, Google, and RedHat – sought to develop and execute a first-time, broad-based event focused on bringing attendees across both the public and private sectors together to teach, learn, and collaborate on ways to create cost savings in Federal IT programs.

Challenges

• Cut through the "noise" in a market with myriad "same-old" conferences by facilitating a truly unique, forward-thinking event focused on government IT cost savings
• Demonstrate understanding of Federal IT challenges and clearly underscore market commitment; position MeriTalk and associated sponsor participants as thought leaders and valued partners in the government IT community
• Disrupt Federal IT's current failing status quo – stimulate new thinking about innovative IT approaches for tight economic times
• Destabilize "proprietary" Federal IT citadels and impel customers to consider open source solutions
• Drive more than 300 qualified attendees to the event
• Generate net new qualified sales leads and high-value relationships

Solution

• MeriTalk and its sponsor organizations launched the Federal IT on a Budget Forum – a full-day event facilitating dialogue, debate, and collaboration on how innovative technologies can stretch the Federal IT dollar
• O'Keeffe & Company launched an integrated marketing campaign comprised of public relations, a disruptive research report and Webinar, Federal IT Bailout online calculator, e-mail marketing, and social media. All campaign elements mapped back to the event and helped drive registration
• O'Keeffe & Company took a five-pronged approach to develop and execute the event:
  • Advisory Group: Engaged an advisory group, composed of government and industry representatives, to help shape the program and drive registration
  • Program: Developed three program tracks focused on compelling, timely topics; included a mix of government and industry speakers
  • Attendee marketing: Used both push and pull strategies – including public relations, e-mail marketing, social media, and Web 2.0 collaborative tools – to generate interest in, and registrations for, the event
  • Sponsorship sales: Gave industry sponsors the opportunity to participate in shaping the event content. Worked closely with industry sponsors to launch the integrated e-mail marketing campaign
  • Logistics: Focused on precise execution and project management. Incorporated Web 2.0 elements such as live Twitter feeds

Results

• Secured 764 pre-registrants
• Secured 44 speaker faculty members (23 from government)
• Attracted 321 government IT decision makers to attend, enabling attendees to explore how to deploy new innovative IT approaches – such as open source, virtualization, and cloud computing/Software as a Service (SaaS) – to create new funding within existing budgets
• Generated 978 leads from the event and integrated marketing components
• Effectively positioned MeriTalk and sponsor partners as a thought leaders – attendees rated the event a four on a scale of one to five