Client: Total Kenya, Commercial Retail & Lubricants Department

Category: Corporate Event Management, Experiential Learning

Date: June 2019

Off the success of the 2019 National Dealers Convention, Total Kenya asked us to put together a conference for the Lubricant Resellers and Distributors.

The Lubricant team asked us to develop a similar experience as we had done for the Network team during the 2019 dealers convention – managing all event related aspects and the training of the dealers. The focus was helping the distributors and resellers run dynamic businesses and be adaptable to the changes in an ever-changing world, while remaining profitable.

Our key areas were helping the lubricant dealers run dynamic businesses, enable them to be open and see the value of adapting to an ever-changing business environment, and positioning their businesses for the future.

However, we realized that we could not talk about change while keeping the environment the same. So as opposed to the usual projector and simple round table set up, we decided to shift the ambience up a bit.

Experiential Learning. Because we were communicating for change and transformation, we combined training talking points with gamification and reflection. The breakdown was 50% gamification, 30% training conversation, 10% case studies and stories and 10% reflection and discussion. For gamification we used Bean Around the World – an immersive business game with real world benefits. Bean Around the World is a competitive team game that focuses on issues such as, short-term success versus long-term strategy, risk management and win-win negotiation. This experiential business game has been carefully constructed to break down silo mentality and ensure collaboration between teams working to a common goal.

The business game fit in perfectly with teaching the participants to embrace change, and be willing to quickly adapt, and set the perfect backdrop for our training session which also doubled up as a debrief of the business game. The training conversation adequately captured how distributors and resellers can position (shock-proof) their businesses for the future through embracing change. This training conversation/ workshop included group sessions, brainstorms, case studies and reflection moments enabling the participants to make clear and tangible goals with the information they were getting.

Stage and Room Design. We included videos and presentations would-be run-on Daylight LED Screens, the podium would be a digital podium and not glass, and there would be ambient lighting around the room in Total’s colors – blue, red and orange. We also utilized a uncomplicated but appealing business conference backdrop containing details of the conference. The backdrop added to the ambience and theme consistency but also served as a backdrop for the speaker’s podium.

Badges and Lanyards not only add to the consistency of the theme, but also allow people to know one another by name and role. This is the first time several people were meeting and it was essential that they do not refer to one another as Mr. or Mrs. so and so, or “nani” (Kenyan slang for someone who’s name you do not know) but by name and also know their role.

Corporate Gifts. We were also tasked with giving them gifts which included attractive aluminum executive clocks with Total Lubricants branding that we imported into the country. The clocks looked great and would be the envy of any business leader, but also communicated the gratitude Total had for its business partners. We included the clocks with an assortment of Total Lubricants merchandise.

The client was pleased with the experience we created. There were clear lessons for the resellers and distributors, the ambience was welcoming and set the tone. As we usually say, our job is to prepare the correct environment and then partner with our client to pass on an impactful and life changing message – in this case we were successful.