Every year, Thermo King Europe invites its dealers to thank them for the past year and to reveal the priorities and initiatives for the next during the Dealer Principals Conference (DPC).
However, due to the outbreak of Covid-19, it was impossible to organize a real live event. So, we had to make a decision: should we host a virtual DPC or skip a year?
“We agreed in a heartbeat that it was impossible to skip this edition – especially after such an extraordinary year”, assures Erika Smets, Marketing Communication Leader at Thermo King EMEA. “And I think the effort was appreciated – nearly 100% of our invitees signed up for the virtual event. That’s unheard of!”
Turning 2,5 days into a 4-hour event
“During the previous years, we hosted DPC over 2,5 days – with presentations, team building activities, and product launches. This was a challenge when turning DPC into a virtual event. We couldn’t keep our dealers glued to their screen for such a long time.
Our solution? We compressed DPC into a 4-hour virtual event – with 4 distinct segments.”
- Meet and greet
“Instead of meeting each other during a reception, we hosted a meet and greet before the event where we got to socialize with dealers and colleagues from across the entire EMEA region.”
- Leadership Livestream
“Our president, Francesco Incalza, and his leadership team gave inspirational speeches to outline the strategic and commercial vision of Thermo King for the coming year.”
- Workshops
“8 workshops of 15 minutes with subject matters experts on THE topics that will define 2021 - showcasing future developments in our truck and trailer ranges, service offerings, trends in the pharmaceutical cold chain, and much more…”
- Virtual exhibition
“With different virtual booths revealing the newest marketing campaigns and where the visitors got to download and collect virtual goodies (in the form of digital promotional materials, …).”
Nearly 100% of all dealers signed up! That’s unheard of!
A different DPC – but keeping the traditions
“We tried to keep the virtual event as close to the real DPC as possible”, stresses Erika Smets.
- Signature gadgets
“Every year, our DPC visitors receive a signature notebook which is kind of a collector’s item. So, this year we delivered the notebooks per postal package to their dealership.”
- Dealer of the Year
“At first, we didn’t know how to approach the Dealer of the Year - Award Ceremony. But all our dealers really went the extra mile during the outbreak of Covid-19. And they took the responsibility to host customer events and turned our Advancer unit into a success story. We figured … ALL dealers deserve to win this prestigious award. And so it happened…”
Logistical – yet successful – nightmare
“The virtual launch of Advancer was probably one of the most challenging events we ever had to face at Thermo King”, confesses Erika Smets. “Although, it was hardly as complex as this virtual DPC.”
“You see, during the Advancer launch in June 2020, we had 1 subject, 1 event, 1 video for 1 audience. At the Digital DPC, we had several formats, complexity of technology and software, we had more speakers, more content, multiple workshops at the same time…”
“The largest logistical nightmare? Definitely the workshops. We had to provide 7 (!) different languages to 8 different groups in 6 virtual rooms… SIMULTANEOUSLY!”
It was a great event. But I hope that DPC is back to normal next year.
Virtual DPC next year?
“After the launch of Advancer, our visitors were eager to see more events like this. However, I think everyone is now saturated by the number of webinars that took place. Because the sentence we heard the most was: “It was a great event. But I hope that DPC is back to normal next year.”"
"Let’s hope we can go to a dream location next year”, concludes Erika Smets.
