The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society annual conference and exhibition is one of the largest events for health technology professionals, clinicians, and vendors from around the world. This year more than 40,000 people from that industry filled the Sands Expo Center February 29 to March 4 for educational sessions, product demonstrations, and networking. One of the companies on the expo floor for the first time was Salesforce. The world’s largest cloud-computing company chose H.I.M.S.S. for the final—and splashiest—piece of a three-part launch strategy for its newest product, Health Cloud.
“Third-party events aren’t part of our core strategy. We only do select ones throughout the year. But H.I.M.S.S. with 40,000 individuals in the healthcare space coincided really nicely with the Health Cloud launch,” says Colin Fleming, vice president and head of industry marketing for Salesforce.
Fleming says their activation was a mix of education, networking, and entertainment, designed to “bring a bit of the Dreamforce energy into H.I.M.S.S.,” referring to the company's largest event. In a 20- by 30-foot booth on the expo floor, Salesforce staff demonstrated the Health Cloud product on two six-foot-tall devices, one made to look like an iPhone and the other like a desktop computer, to draw attendees’ attention as they passed by. The booth also included a variety of customer success stories on banners and digital displays. The company also led conference sessions, hosted executive dinners, and used promotional signage on buses and throughout the convention center.
“We looked at the walking path of everyone walking into and out of the conference and tried to use our strategic branding opportunities to really capture the eyes and the hearts and the minds of attendees,” Fleming says.
The final night of the conference, Salesforce hosted an invitation-only party at Surrender nightclub in Wynn Las Vegas. About 1,000 customers, prospects, and partners experienced Health Cloud demonstrations and sipped custom cocktails while listening to entertainment from singer Elle King.
“We look at this very much as an introduction as to who Salesforce is to this group. There’s no better way when you are introducing yourself into a very long-standing industry like healthcare than building that face-to-face relationship with industry leaders at a very influential conference,” Fleming says.
