Visit Seattle

Daring To Be Different

The Professional Meeting Planner’s Association had never held it’s annual membership conference anywhere in the Pacific Northwest before. Landing the week-long gathering of meeting planners from around the world means hundreds of millions of dollars in future bookings for the host city. Seattle had won the bid and the work of convincing the members to travel west rests with a luncheon event for 1,000 members in Toronto, the current host city.

The best-practices for the luncheon pitch was to have the CEO of the city’s visitors and convention bureau introduce the mayor and a few local celebrities, show a nice video showcasing the city’s highlights, and have the biggest band you can get play for the rest of lunch. Seattle had already lined up a set by Heart when we came onto the project. What would we suggest to tell the story they asked…

We proposed that the lunch start with an announcement that the host city CEO isn’t here, but instead his “intern” will do the show instead. Our CEO then appears in a set of tongue-in-cheek video call and tracking videos that the intern shows as he helps his boss get from Seattle to Toronto via an experimental travel device at Boeing. The program was a huge success and the Seattle PCMA was the best attended ever.