SITUATION:
Our client was launching a new service in Zurich, Switzerland. The managing director was a local, but didn’t have relationships in the tight-knit banking community. It was a classic catch-22: you couldn’t do business without first having a relationship with your prospects, but you couldn’t build a relationship without first having done business together.

SPARK:
The client considered staging a launch event at a local hotel and bringing in a speaker. But would this crowd come to yet another banquet-hall event? No.
        So we did the unexpected. Rather than have an event where the prospects (if they showed up) would be sold to, we decided to stage a party — and not do any selling!
        And, since this was Switzerland, what could be more obvious than a beach party, right? Of course not, and that was the attraction.

RESULT:
We sent out wild and fun invitations to 200 of the top investment professionals in Zurich — and had 195 of them show up! We had games and quizzes for them to play, and great prizes they could win (like an hour in an acrobatic airplane).
        There was no overt selling by any of the staff, with no brochures or products anywhere in sight. We did add product info in humorous ways to the quizzes, which only piqued curiousity more. And the final result was a huge boost in business and a large number of very profitable relationships for our client.