If Jessica Welch, senior manager of events and sponsorships for the Washington-based Health Industry Distributors Association, knows one thing about health-care folks, it’s that they don’t shy away from some friendly competition. At the association’s annual MedSurg conference and expo, “many of our attendees are former athletes who enjoy going head to head with their colleagues and clients,” Welch said. “We spend a lot of time researching and getting to know our attendee demographics, and finding out what drives them. We model our whole conference around that information.”
Welch’s findings play out most literally at the conference’s opening-night networking event, dubbed “Wheelers vs. Dealers.” Typically held in a ballroom made into an athletic court for the evening, the event pits health-care-product manufacturers against distributors in competitive games such as dodgeball or basketball. The event has seen steadily increasing attendance—some 800 guests turned out in 2009, as opposed to about 650 in 2008—and has proven to be a creative, effective, and fun way to form new business relationships.
What did you do for the 2009 Wheelers vs. Dealers tournament?
In the Potomac ballroom of [Washington’s] Gaylord National, we built a runway-type platform in the center of the room, where the teams competed at tug-of-war. Lounges for each of our sponsors surrounded the stage. Within the lounges, we had glow columns customized with each sponsor’s logo, so that each company had their own area to invite their guests to come relax in and network. On one side of the ballroom, a professional graffiti artist spray painted a 30- by 20-foot canvas while the event took place. The canvas was completely blank at 7:30 p.m., and by 10:30 p.m., it had become a mural of the two teams playing tug-of-war, with the winning company’s name in the painting—the painting was the company’s take-home prize.
What are some of the nontraditional ways the event fosters networking?
We have an M.C. who begins by introducing each team like [the tournament] is an N.B.A. game. There are strobe lights, music, and personal introductions for each company involved in the competition. The purpose of this is that everyone at the event gets to know the names of the 100-plus people who are participating, without forcing the formal introduction that can be difficult to make happen at an event with 800 guests.
How have you built sponsor relationships?
To enter a team into the competition, a company has to be a sponsor. We had companies calling and spending money just so they could become a sponsor and play. We had people calling each week, which never used to happen.
