If You’re Going to Do Something, Do It First Class

If You’re Going to Do Something, Do It First Class

 

I have long made this statement, not just about business, but about life.  Why bother doing something big if you’re not going to do it right?  Don’t just write a senior thesis, get an A on it.  Don’t invite the boss over for dinner and serve chicken nuggets.  You get the idea.

 

Our marketing team at Return Path totally nailed this last week with our IN conference on Reputation.  They selected a venue, the American Museum of Natural History, that wasn’t just a standard issue hotel conference room.  They sought out a killer keynote speaker, Seth Godin, instead of just having Return Path staff and clients talk.  They used Perception Analyzer, a new technology to integrate audience polling into the presentations instead of just serving up one bullet-point slide after the next.  They went above and beyond and paid attention to every last detail. 

 

All these things made the event harder to pull off (and more expensive), but collectively they made the day absolutely First Class — and that was noted by every attendee who I spoke with during and after the event as they gushed about the quality of the conference.

 

The proof is always in the pudding with these things, and we’ll have to measure our ROI on the event over the next few months in terms of new sales and client retention, but I bet that the quality and remarkability of the event will prove the axiom that If You’re Going to Do Something, Do It First Class.