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The challenge. To build brand loyalty in an increasingly commoditized world. The solution. Offer an annual user show where customers can gain in-depth knowledge of your products and socialize with company employees, vendors and each other. Cessna Aircraft has offered a users conference in and near its Wichita headquarters for more than 30 years. The show offers customers a mix of education and pleasure, with company and guest speakers, maintenance and operation seminars, exhibits, and two large evening social events for customers and their wives or husbands. Audiences are large and the audio-visual setups impressive. For the first time, Conference Technologies handled all the AV equipment rentals and staging this year, working from our new Wichita office. Enthusiastic customers Cessna Aircraft enjoys an enthusiastic customer base. Shane McCormick, Supervisor, Events & Media Communications for Cessna, says “when you think about where some of these customers are traveling from, Wichita may not seem like the most exciting place. But they love it here.” Over 425 Cessna Citation jet owners attended this year –a new record– plus wives, husbands and, in many cases, children. “The show gives Cessna a chance to educate their customers and show off their new products,” says Steve Maulin, one of the managers of CTI’s new Wichita branch. More importantly, adds McCormick, “it provides a good platform for Cessna to listen to our customers’ concerns about their Citations and also their success stories.” It’s a testimony to how straight up a company Cessna is that they routinely put their customers together where they could presumably share negative stories as well as good. “They love Tuesday night in the hanger and seeing the different aircraft,” McCormick says. “They love being around Cessna people and their own peers and talking about their aircraft. They’re aviation enthusiasts and it’s easy to tell.” Switching to a new vendor Before this year’s show, Cessna had used the same audiovisual provider for almost 20 years. “I had an expectation for what Conference Technologies might accomplish for us,” says McCormick, “but naturally there was some trepidation about making such a big change.” 
“We didn’t have any major hiccups,” he adds. “I felt especially good when CTI easily resolved a couple of unexpected problems without anyone knowing they had happened.” Printable version of this article Photos courtesy Cessna Aircraft |
“You can get the latest and greatest equipment anywhere,” says Cessna’s Shane McCormick, “but if you don’t have the right people to help support you or a company with the capability to supply your demands on short notice, it doesn’t matter.” CTI helped Cessna create six ‘nice touches’ that made this year’s show particularly impressive, including:
Learn how CTI helped Cessna use these simple ideas to create an unusually impressive user show |
Though CTI brought in high-end equipment for the 2007 Citation Customer Conference –including 12,000 lumen projectors– the impressiveness of the event was due as much to the way they set it up. 